Epic Games just announced that they will be hosting an 8-week Fortnite competition called the “Summer Skirmish” during which they will be awarding players a total of 8,000,000 USD in prize money! There will be a series of multiple events with the first one being a 250,000 USD duos competition this weekend. The qualifying rules for this weekend’s event were pre-set by Epic Games and they’ve already sent notifications to all players who were able to make the cut.
For the first match which begins this Saturday, July 14th, the company decided to choose participants who are clear community creators and players who had effectively demonstrated their “competitive prowess.” Each event will have different qualifying rules so players need to stay tuned to hear what they need to do in order for a chance to qualify for subsequent events.
The massive prize pool for these events is part of Epic Games’ plan to invest 100 million USD in Fortnite prize pool money for 2018-2019 tournaments. In their official announcement for this back at the end of May, they mentioned that they planned to make Fortnite competitive play a bit different from how other major eSports titles do it by making it “more inclusive, and focused on the joy of playing and watching the game.”
Given that this Summer Skirmish is the first massive in-game competitive event hosted by Epic Games, it’s interesting to see how their idea to make competitive play “more inclusive” actually panned out. The Summer Skirmish announcement makes it seem as though anyone with the skills has a chance of not only qualifying for major matches, but also potentially winning huge prizes. This is certainly very different from how other eSports titles have been structuring their events and in my opinion, is simply brilliant. It takes the concept of eSports, something that so far has only involved a handful of select players, and makes it something that anyone with the skills and/or a little bit of luck has the chance to experience.
