FaZe Jarvis, the 17-year-old Fortnite personality who got permanently banned for using cheating software in his videos, has been under intense public scrutiny over the past week. The video where he admits he wasn’t thinking of the potential consequences that might follow showing off a Fortnite aimbot for funsies has racked up 10 million views. But as the public debates whether or not public content creators should be held to a different standard than everyday players, the controversial influencer has been mostly mum about the fallout — until now.
In his first video since the initial blow-up, FaZe Jarvis reiterates that Fortnite has changed his life — prior to the ban, he says that he spent the last two years consumed by the drive to make new content for the battle royale game. He also uses this opportunity to announce that he’s going to take a short break from making new videos. But, rather than letting the ban end his career, Jarvis says he’ll keep making new material once he’s back. He’s just got to figure out what that will look like and how it will work, given that he’s been dependent on Fortnite up until this point. It seems likely that Jarvis will have to pivot to playing other games.
“One thing I’ve been thinking about the most is how to move forward,” Jarvis says in the upload, which is currently trending on YouTube. “I want to let you all know is that you’re going to make mistakes in life, but the most important thing is how you learn from those mistakes and become a better person.”
It’s a good sentiment, especially in the wake of media ribbings against him. Recently, British tabloids got a hold of the ban story, and ran articles speculating how much money the YouTuber might have made from the video announcing his ban, along with remarks about how his childhood home apparently costs over a million pounds. Elsewhere, personalities like Tyler “Ninja” Blevins have made headlines after opining on the situation, with the blue-haired Mixer streamer asserting that a lifetime ban felt too severe given that Jarvis has a following.
“There’s a difference between a content creator who has millions of subscribers, hundreds of thousands of followers, that gets banned from what literally makes him money, and some kid who is just a piece of shit, has absolutely zero following, has zero money that comes from Fortnite,” Blevins said in a livestream last week. “It’s different. The stakes are different.”
But regardless of how Jarvis fares in the court of public opinion, Epic Games has no plans to lift or diminish the punishment.
“We have a zero tolerance policy for the usage of cheat software,” an Epic Games spokesperson told Polygon. “When people use aimbots or other cheat technologies to gain an unfair advantage, they ruin games for people who are playing fairly.”
