What is an illegal restart in Fortnite?

Competitive Fortnite is both amazing to tune in to as a viewer and a player. Participating in an event doesn’t require any explanations if you fulfill all the requirements. This high-level of accessibility for competitive play means that each weekly tournament is yet another chance for up-and-coming players to prove themselves.

Even if you consider yourself a favorite to win the next Cash Cup or any other event, the matches may not always go according to the plan. Though it sounds like a cheap shot, there have been players who re-enter the events with other accounts after crashing out of them earlier than expected.

While second chances are more than welcomed in most aspects of life, they’ve recently become strictly prohibited to retain the competitive integrity of Fortnite. If you haven’t been keeping up with the competitive ruleset of Fortnite and received the “Illegal Restart” warning, then you may have gone against the new “one entry per event” rule that was introduced in December 2020.

“Players may only have one entry, using one Epic account, into the Event for a given session,” the ruleset reads. “Players are expressly prohibited from having additional Event entries using additional or secondary Epic account(s), and/or participating from more than one region.”

This statement’s bottom line is that all players will be prohibited from having additional Event entries by using additional Epic accounts. You can only enter a tournament once. Even if you change accounts, Fortnite will be able to tell it’s you and issue the “Illegal Restart” to both of the accounts that you used.

The first wave of warnings was issued to all players who went against the rule and were detected by the system, but Epic also stated some players may have received it due to an error.

If you haven’t participated in a tournament for a while or never tried to re-enter an event with another account, then you should have nothing to worry about. In any case where you’re actually guilty, then you’re in luck since the first one is free. Your account won’t be banned immediately as it was a warning. You’ll need to play by the rules as you move on, however, or you can actually get banned and lose all of your cosmetics in the process.