Photo Credit: Epic Games
Just yesterday, it was announced by esports insider Rod “Slasher” Breslau that Epic Games were planning to host a $500,000 solo tournament as the second component in their Summer Skirmish Series. While this was exciting news, what made it so significant was that it conflicted with Fortnite Friday, a popular weekly tournament hosted by YouTuber Daniel “KEEMSTAR” Keem and UMG Gaming.
However, today KEEMSTAR announced that this today’s Fortnite Friday would be canceled, explaining that while they only invited 5 of his players yesterday, they ended up inviting everyone originally participating in Fortnite Friday to the $500,000 tournament. Given such a bigger prize pool, players went with the Summer Skirmish tournament. Below is KEEMSTAR’s official tweet.
#FridayFortnite is canceled for tomorrow.@EpicGames is running their own event & told everyone last min. Yesterday they invited 5 of my players so I was still doing FF now they invited all.
They capped FF at $20k & are doing events for $500k. I’m not holding the players back.
— KEEM ? (@KEEMSTAR) July 20, 2018
UMG Events also tweeted yesterday that it would no longer host Friday Fortnite tournaments.
Millions of you tuned in weekly, over $170,000 was awarded and thousands donated. Thank you to the viewers, @KEEMSTAR, @GFuelEnergy, @OfficialEGL, @SteelSeries, @FortniteGame and all of the players for making it special. (2/2) pic.twitter.com/1Ia4Pu4Fko
— UMG Gaming (@UMGGaming) July 20, 2018
With Fortnite Friday canceled, all eyes turn to the $500,00 solo tournament. Given week one’s disastrous start, Epic made some changes this tournament to incentivize players to get kills. A scoring system is now in place: victory royales = 5 points, each kill = 1 point, and if you’re able to get 20+ kills in a game, you get 10 points and an additional $10,000.
After the 10 games, the player with the most amount of points is the winner, and with such a kill-heavy scoring system in place, this tournament is sure to be more action-packed than the first. Watch it on Twitch, matches start at 5 PM ET!