Fortnite Battle Royale
Promo art for Fortnite Battle Royale. Epic Games

The mother of a 14-year-old boy being sued by a major video game developer has written a letter in defence of her son, who has refused to remove a video promoting the use of cheat software in free-to-play game Fortnite.

Epic Games, which developed the sandbox survival game, took legal action against the boy after he filed a counterclaim against the DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) takedown notice the developer had lodged against the video.

The boy is one of two players Epic is taking to court.

In her letter (available to read in full online), the boy's mother said: "This company is in the process of attempting to sue a 14-year-old child.

"It is my belief that due to their lack of ability to curb cheat codes and others from modifying their game, they are using a 14-year-old child as a scapegoat to make an example of him," she said.

She claims her son did not help create the cheat software, as Epic has alleged, and that the studio "has no capability of proving any form of modification". She accuses Epic of violating Delaware law in its case against her son.

"It is illegal to release underage individuals' personal information by any agencies," she writes.

As TorrentFreak - who shared the letter online - points out, minors cannot be sued directly, which raises the possibility that Epic Games did not know his age when it went ahead with the lawsuit.

The boy was using cheat software that affected Fortnite Battle Royale, a large multiplayer arena mode added to the game following its release, which was directly inspired by the success of early access PC hit PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds (PUBG).

Fortnite's mode has an identical structure to PUBG, with 100 players air-dropped into a huge, gradually shrinking arena where they must find items to help them emerge as the sole survivor or surviving squad.

The mode is not Fortnite's main mode but is the cause of its success given it launched on PS4 and Xbox One at a time when no console versions of PUBG had been announced.

An Xbox version has since been announced and will launch on 12 December.