After releasing on almost every gaming platform out there, Fortnite completes the list as it comes to Nintendo Switch. Epic Games also announced plans for Fortnite in the upcoming 2018-19 competitive season by announcing the Fortnite World Cup in which Epic announced that it’ll give out a massive $100 million in funding.
By now, even if you don’t play video games at all, you would’ve heard about Fortnite, that’s just how popular this game is. The Battle Royale game took the world by storm only last year and has exponentially grown since then. The game was launched on smartphones only a few months ago and it’s now officially out for every modern gaming platform right now with the game’s inclusion on Switch. Fortnite is available now on the Eshop and everything is ready, you can simply download it for free and start playing.
Epic Games revealed in a blog post that the game has reached a mind-blowing 125 million players, that too in just one year. That just goes to show how popular Fortnite is right now and it’s showing no signs of stopping as the game continues to improve and evolve day by day.
Epic Games also announced the Fortnite 2018-19 competitive season in which they’ll be giving $100 million in funding for “community organized events, online events, and major organized competitions all over the world, where anyone can participate, and anyone can win.” Although Epic Games had already made the announcement for its intentions to enter the realm of eSports, we have more concrete details now as to what exactly they want to do.
According to Epic, the qualifiers for the Fortnite World Cup will begin in fall, whereas the finals will take place in 2019. The game modes to be featured in the cup will be the classic solo Battle Royale mode and duos mode. Those who prefer playing in a squad, don’t worry, Epic said they have plans for that as well.
Furthermore, Epic Games also said that all the qualifications will be based on player skill and that no team or franchise can buy their way in. According to them, the Fortnite World Cup is for players and players only which shows that they’re really pushing hard into eSports, putting the entire focus on making it as competitive as possible.
Many other eSports tournament have high costs just to create teams, for example, it costs millions of dollars to create an Overwatch League team. However, given the huge amount of money Fortnite generates, they’re able to provide a larger funding and thus, are able to easily settle in the competitive scene.
Fortnite’s inclusion into eSports will put an end to the debate of Fortnite living on borrowed time due to the peak of Battle Royale popularity as the competitive gaming scene will ensure the game stays relevant even when the hype does die down.