Yesterday I wrote a story concerning Unreal Tournament III modder EpicJon who felt that Epic Games had stolen his map idea for the Xbox 360 version of the game. Because I felt like doing a little bit of that so-called "journalism," I actually decided to put out some Destructoid feelers for a response from Epic itself and got it.

Here's what Epic's Mark Rein had to say on the matter:

I got an email from "EpicJon" and responded to him. I also reinstated him in the forum and posted in that thread that stealing maps isn't our thing and we'll look into it.

It was probably a little over-zealous to ban the guy - especially when he's a mod maker for our game. When I went to reinstate him I checked found out that he posted 13 posts in under an hour accusing us of stealing his map without even waiting for us to respond so I think we're even on the over-zealousness factor :)

The restored thread is here, where Mark states that Epic isn't into theft. I definitely agree it was too much to ban him, and made Epic look guilty right off the bat. Still, with Epic making something of an official response and considering the maps look fairly different in the cold light of day, I expect this one will blow over soon enough.