Epic Games Pulls 'Fortnite' YouTube Pre-Roll Ads Amid Exploitation Allegations

YouTube has found itself in another controversy. The video-sharing platform is receiving blowback over its alleged inability to monitor predatory videos and comments aimed at children. This critique is already starting to have repercussions, courtesy of Epic Games.

A representative for Epic Games told The Verge, “We have paused all pre-roll advertising. Through our advertising agency, we have reached out to Google/YouTube to determine actions they’ll take to eliminate this type of content from their service.” This coming on the heels of YouTube changing its community guidelines and strike policy couldn’t be worse.

A video from YouTuber user Matt Watson recently went viral after he demonstrated how searching certain key terms led to exploitative videos of children. As you can imagine, the comments sections of these videos, some of which contained monetized pre-video ads, were also filled with predatory language. Wired reported on Wednesday that “Fortnite” was one of the advertisements spotted on the offending content.

Epic pulling pre-roll ads is bound to be the first in a mass call by YouTube channels, personally and corporately owned, for the site to address these videos and comments. Considering the popularity of Epic Games’ “Fortnite” alone, this is proving to be incentive enough for YouTube to start acting.

A YouTube representative informed The Verge that “We took immediate action by deleting accounts and channels, reporting illegal activity to authorities and disabling violative comments.” This is the first step in addressing the situation, but there’s still plenty of work for YouTube to do.