Epic Games Is Spending $700,000 Just So Competitive Fortnite Players Can Practice

It’s a light weekend for esports, save for Epic Games’ Fortnite World Cup Warm Up. It’s a two-day mini-tournament which, because it’s Fortnite, will nevertheless include a $US500,000 ($701,666) prize divided up among hundreds of winners.

Competitive Fortnite’s World Cup event is slated to take place in July. Before that, teams will compete in a series of qualifiers in order to enter.

And before that, top players from all over the world who have managed to rank up to Division 6 in Arena Mode’s Contender’s League will be able to compete in this weekend’s Warm Up, featuring a prize pool to dwarf most games’ world championships.

During the semi-finals on Saturday (US time, so likely Sunday in Australia), these players will face off against one another, with the top 1500 duos teams advancing to the finals on Sunday.

In the spirit of a true battle royale, the structure seems poised to allow anything to happen, including even the best laid plans being derailed by lag, server disconnects or just poor luck.

Since it’s just a warm up, the top finishing teams in every region will all win at something. In the Northeast, for instance, 500th place will still take home $US200 ($281), while 1st place wins $US4500 ($6315). It’s almost as though Epic has more money than its esports department knows what to do with.

It’ll also be a good opportunity for players to get acquainted with the new resolution restrictions for competitive play that Epic rolled out this week.

There’s no firm schedule for when matches will start on each day, but you’ll be able to find at least some of the action streaming on the official Fortnite Twitch channel.

Elsewhere in competitive gaming, North America’s two League of Legends juggernauts, Team Solo Mid and Cloud9, will face each other on Sunday at 8:00AM AEDT in the second leg of the spring 2019 championship semi-finals.

Tied coming out of the regular season, Cloud9 has been victorious in both the two teams’ previous meetings this year, while TSM has history on its side. It could well end up being the best five-game series of the entire season, so tune into Riot’s Twitch channel to watch.

Finally, the fighting game community descends on Brussels this weekend. Matches begin Saturday night at 7:00PM AEDT with BlazBlue: Cross Tag and Super Smash Bros. Ultimate pools, before wrapping up around 2:30AM AEDT on Sunday with Street Fighter 5. Later on Sunday, Smash Ultimate top eight begins at 6:00PM AEDT, with Dragon Ball FighterZ top four starting at midnight, followed by Street Fighter 5 top eight.

The biggest matches will be streaming on the Brussels Challenge Twitch channel, but you can find a complete schedule of the event here.