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Epic Games has announced a $1 million prize pool for Fortnite’s upcoming Winter Royale Online Tournament.
"The Online Tournament system will be used next year to determine participants in the Fortnite World Cup," explains a blog post by the Fortnite team at Epic. "Starting later this month, we will hold a test event that will emulate the World Cup Qualification process. This will help us gather valuable learnings to better prepare for the process next year."
To kick things off, solo tests will run on November 24th and 25th, starting with the Winter Royale Qualifiers. "There will be several chances for anyone to try and get a high score during the Winter Royale Qualifier days," the blog adds. "The highest score you achieve during any event session will be the one that counts, so be sure to give it your all! As part of our ongoing competitive tests to prepare for the Fortnite World Cup, Winter Royale will use the same game settings as the currently available Pop-Up Cup."
After verification, the top performers in Europe and North America will be invited to participate in the regional Winter Royale Finals, set to commence November 30th and December 11th respectively. While this tournament is currently restricted to players from North America and Europe, Epic will be holding "other region-specific tournaments in additional regions in the near future".
Following its recent South Korean debut, Fortnite has now hit an all-time high of 8.3 million concurrent players. Epic Games Korea CEO Sung Chul Park announced the new record, confirming the new high smashes the previous record of 3.4 million concurrent players.
The global obsession with Fortnite shows no sign of slowing down, with Nintendo recently confirming that Epic’s fan-favourite battle royale game has "gained so much momentum" that since its release on Switch earlier this year, the game has been downloaded to "nearly half" of all systems worldwide.
In other Fortnite news, Streamer Tyler "Ninja" Blevins is hosting a 12-hour Fortnite livestream from Times Square, New York, this New Year’s Eve. "This is going to be a NYE in Times Square like you’ve never seen before," Ninja said about the upcoming event.
Epic Games recently secured $1.25 billion in additional funding, the news arriving just days after former CEO of the Games Developers Association of Australia (GDAA), Anthony Reed, announced he had stepped down from his position to work with Epic Games and establish a new office for the Fortnite developer in Australia and New Zealand. While Reed did not expand on what Epic’s plans are, nor what his new role will be, he promised there would be "a lot of news" soon.
