The Voice of Spalding and South Holland
The American company behind a multi-billion pound video game is suing the Spalding organiser of a ‘shambolic’ weekend which has reportedly led to the shut down of his business.
It’s believed that a similar ‘Fortnite Live’ event planned to take place in Spalding next month has been cancelled.
Epic Games, which owns the Fortnite game and its rights, contacted the High Court in London over the weekend promoted by Exciting Events held recently in Norfolk which led to numerous complaints from attendees.
The ‘Fortnite Live’ event reportedly saw families queueing for up to an hour just to get in on Saturday, when the show opened. There were complaints about a lack of things to do and poor organisation.
Standard tickets cost £12 and “unrestricted” tickets £20 for the event.
“Epic Games was not in any way associated with the event that took place in Norwich and we’ve issued a claim against the organisers in the High Court of London,” said a statement from the company’s USA headquarters earlier this week.
Exciting Events removed its Facebook page after a flood of comments and complaints by irate parents who claimed the event was a waste of time.
Shaun Lord, who runs the company, was reported as saying he felt his company had been more than fair in offering the refunds on Saturday.
At the time he also added that the planned Spalding event, and another in Newark, were still going ahead.
But on Tuesday gaming websites including Eurogamer reported that an email had been sent to Exciting Events customers saying those two events had been cancelled as the company was being forced to shut down.
Eurogamer says the email reads: “These proceedings by Epic Games has had a catastrophic impact on the company’s ability to trade, which has forced Exciting Events Limited to cease all trading activities immediately and the director of Exciting Events will now seek to limit the losses to third parties as far as possible.”
Exciting Events had reportedly sold 200 tickets for the show being advertised for a Spalding venue in March.
Mr Lord did not respond to attempts by The Voice to contact him and Exciting Events’ website had been taken down on Wednesday morning.
