Fortnite 2019 World Cup Announced

At the Fortnite Celebrity Pro-Am during E3 2018, Epic Games revealed more details for its plans to turn Fortnite into a legitimate e-sport in the form of the Fortnite 2019 World Cup. It will allow the game's 125 million players to qualify for various events. Qualifiers will take place across the world and the $100 million prize money will be split between those competitions. The Fortnite 2019 World Cup itself will focus on solos and duos with other events that will having you squad up. Epic Games claims that anyone can participate and win.

Furthermore, it seems that Epic will be using the $100 million prize pool for more than competitive play with Community and E-sports Operations Manager at Epic Games K.L. Smith stating that Epic will be "supporting community run events, online events, and major competitions all over the world." In addition to this, Epic won't be selling franchises or teams and won't be allowing third-parties to do so.

Previously, Epic Games announced a $100 million prize pool for the first year of Fortnite e-sports tournaments. To put that into perspective, the year one prize pool for Fortnite is more than every major e-sport put together in 2017. This includes the likes of heavyweights like Call of Duty, Halo 5, Overwatch, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, Dota 2, League of Legends, Rocket League, PUBG, and StarCraft to name a few.

It's an interesting turn of events considering that the battle royale genre hasn't been taken seriously by many an e-sports organiser just yet. In fact, PUBG's tournaments in India are restricted to solely online play due to the costs involved. That said, the fact that Epic is willing to put that much money on the table is bound to ensure the battle royale genre as a whole takes off in a big way.

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