Epic Games to drop $100m into Fortnite esports during the 2018-2019 season

[ItsMitch]

S: Epic Games (Tencent owned company)

Epic Games is preparing to step into the esports world with Fortnite Battle Royale as they have announced a prize pool of $100'000'000 for the first 2018 and 2019 seasons respectively. To put this into perspective, last year over 16 titles from across the gaming industry was only able to amass 100m from all 16 titles in 2017. 

 

Epic released this on their website

Quote

 

Fortnite Competitors!

 

Grab your gear, drop in and start training. Since the launch of Fortnite Battle Royale we’ve watched the passion for community competition grow and can’t wait to empower you to battle with the best.

In the 2018 - 2019 season, Epic Games will provide $100,000,000 to fund prize pools for Fortnite competitions. We’re getting behind competitive play in a big way, but our approach will be different - we plan to be more inclusive, and focused on the joy of playing and watching the game.

 

Stay tuned for more details about competitive structures and eligible platforms in the weeks ahead!

 

It's pretty funny to me, when CoD Black Ops 4 was announced, people was tweeting Rip Fortnite, think the joke is on them now since Call of Duty IW and Black Ops 3 was only able to award 8 million total. [S]

 

I'm happy with this, crazy money being on the table, time to get good. 

[mynameisjuan]

What a waste of money

[DocSwag]

41 minutes ago, mynameisjuan said:

What a waste of money

Not necessarily. This could really develop the pro scene which could generate revenue from people watching as well as get more people to play.

 

That being said, $100 million is a lot to drop considering its highly possible fortnite will fizzle out in a year or two and not be as ridiculously popular as it is now.

[Doobeedoo]

That's an insanely huge amount indeed. While I'm not into BR and don't see it as a eSport type of gameplay really duebto it's nature, great that it grows eSports in general I guess. 

Wish that this was for UT4 though xD. 

[mynameisjuan]

16 minutes ago, DocSwag said:

Not necessarily. This could really develop the pro scene which could generate revenue from people watching as well as get more people to play.

First is almost everyone knows about this game...why advertise more.

 

Second....how about put the 100 million into more content, new game, expansion....anything but to people just because they play games all day.

[DocSwag]

3 minutes ago, mynameisjuan said:

First is almost everyone knows about this game...why advertise more.

Know about it, sure. Play it? Not necessarily.

 

There's always the consideration that it is an opportunity to generate ad revenue from sponsors and viewers, too.

4 minutes ago, mynameisjuan said:

 

Second....how about put the 100 million into more content, new game, expansion....anything but to people just because they play games all day.

As long as they're pushing out a lot of content I'm fine with it. I must say though, 100 million is a lot to push out. I don't think they really needed that much... 50 million or maybe even 25 million woild be more than enough.

[Froody129]

They are very aware that Fortnite reeks of fad and is going to die in not too long unless they keep people interested. Capitalising on the already huge market of people watching Twitch streams and things is a very good way to make a buck and attempt to solidify their game in the public (something PUBG hasn't done so well).

 

I agree with @DocSwag, this is a lot of money to drop on something that isn't all that skill based. Even an awesome player depends on the loot they get and that isn't conducive to a fair competition. 

[rawrdaysgoby]

LOL how is this going to work

[EnergyEclipse]

7 hours ago, mynameisjuan said:

What a waste of money

To think you could buy a Ferrari LeFerrari nearly like 60 times for that kind of money, and its Fortnite...

 

[Bcat00]

6 hours ago, DocSwag said:

Know about it, sure. Play it? Not necessarily.

 

There's always the consideration that it is an opportunity to generate ad revenue from sponsors and viewers, too.

As long as they're pushing out a lot of content I'm fine with it. I must say though, 100 million is a lot to push out. I don't think they really needed that much... 50 million or maybe even 25 million woild be more than enough.

Tencent owned, that's nothing in their books

[Bcat00]

2 hours ago, Froody129 said:

They are very aware that Fortnite reeks of fad and is going to die in not too long unless they keep people interested. Capitalising on the already huge market of people watching Twitch streams and things is a very good way to make a buck and attempt to solidify their game in the public (something PUBG hasn't done so well).

 

I agree with @DocSwag, this is a lot of money to drop on something that isn't all that skill based. Even an awesome player depends on the loot they get and that isn't conducive to a fair competition. 

That's kinda the charm of it, its NOT fair play lol

 

if you take that out, it loses all the fun

[DocSwag]

53 minutes ago, Bcat00 said:

Tencent owned, that's nothing in their books

Doesn't necessarily mean the money is coming out of Tencent's pockets. Tencent just has a 40% stake in the company.

[DocSwag]

3 hours ago, Froody129 said:

I agree with @DocSwag, this is a lot of money to drop on something that isn't all that skill based. Even an awesome player depends on the loot they get and that isn't conducive to a fair competition.

I feel that they'll need to somehow nullify this randomness in some way if they want the pro scene to truly takeoff.

 

In other FPSes or esports titles like LoL, Dota 2, and Rocket League, there's little to no randomness in the game. The players control nearly 100% of what goes on, making it almost entirely skill based. However, Fortnite has tons of randomness in the game. E.g. chest loot, bus location, air drops, whether or not the zone lands on you, etc. Imagine playing in a pro game with thousands of dollars at stake, landing at the same place as someone else, and ending up dying because there was a shotgun in their chest and a pistol in your's.

56 minutes ago, Bcat00 said:

That's kinda the charm of it, its NOT fair play lol

 

if you take that out, it loses all the fun

And while that's great, it really makes it hard to create a fair pro mode without a fair bit of customization to the game itself IMO

[surroundsound]

Yeah I think the randomness of the game makes it hard to believe that Fortnite as an esport can truly take off. 

 

The other thing that was briefly mentioned but hasn't really been talked about is that it would be tremendously difficult to spectate, let alone commentate, on a full scale game of Fortnite. There is simply too much action occurring at once to be able to point out what's going on, particularly at the early stages of a game.

 

I watch a ton of esports, but I'm really skeptical about Fortnite being able to pivot into long term stable success. Smells too much like a Pokemon Go phenomenon to me. 

[PCGuy_5960]

38 minutes ago, DocSwag said:

Fortnite has tons of randomness in the game. E.g. chest loot, bus location, air drops, whether or not the zone lands on you, etc

Hell, even their aiming system is 100% RNG after the first shot. I just don't get how BRs can be competitive when there is so much randomness involved. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 

[Bcat00]

2 hours ago, DocSwag said:

 

I can relate to where you are getting at. In terms of like competitive nature, you want everything to be as even as possible to make it fair on both sides. 

 

But in business terms, once you throw enough cash at it, which is exactly what's going on here, you can damn well expect people to swarm to it regardless of it being fair or not.

 

That's how the world works, things doesn't move unless money is involved, same applies to all the other competitive sports. Nobody will continue to compete in Dota 2 or CS:GO if the prize money is next to little or nothing.

 

[Canada EH]

9 hours ago, DocSwag said:

$100 million is a lot to drop

depends on how deep the pockets are and what risks are involved, thats why they have 100's if not 1000's of professionals to look into business decisions like that, while we can just contemplate this and that

[laminutederire]

The more companies will fund pools for games not suited for esports, the sooner esports will die altogether in the eyes of the rest of the world. Because if the game is bad for that, no matter the money, it won't end up okay. We all have seen what happened to overwatch esport journey...

[Syntaxvgm]

15 hours ago, PCGuy_5960 said:

Hell, even their aiming system is 100% RNG after the first shot. I just don't get how BRs can be competitive when there is so much randomness involved. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 

not really a fn player- Isn't the first shot rng as well on most guns if you're moving at all?

 

Aim bloom. Such esport material.

[Velcade]

An estimated 45 million people play Fortnite.  If each player buys one skin (at $24.00) that's enough money to run 10 x $100,000,000 tournaments.  The 100,000,000 is a gamble that will pay off nicely for Epic.

[PocketNerd]

On 5/22/2018 at 2:32 PM, PCGuy_5960 said:

Hell, even their aiming system is 100% RNG after the first shot. I just don't get how BRs can be competitive when there is so much randomness involved. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 

To be fair, any aiming system that wasn't RNG is unrealistic and boring.

[JoeCoke]

People might disagree with this, but come on, Fortnite just has too much RNG to be competitive. Sure, it obviously takes a certain amount of skill, but it's just way too random. I'll never understand people taking that game seriously.

[Trixanity]

Am I the only one thinking that they've set aside that much money but not necessarily gonna use it all?

 

I mean it's a lot of money and it's great advertisement but it's an unprecedented amount over how many tournaments?

 

It'll cause massive inflation and esports will eventually turn into the shit show modern sports are.

[spartaman64]

the only way i can see this working is if they make a custom mode where all the drops are set instead of being random

[ItsMitch]

Just now, spartaman64 said:

the only way i can see this working is if they make a custom mode where all the drops are set

Custom Mode has been in the works for a while now, consoles have limited versions that require a code to lobbies (streamers, etc) but Epic do plan on releasing a fully fleshed out mode for private games, esports, the stuff like that.