The year 2021 has been all about video calls and virtual meets, and one area that has been affected significantly by this drastic social shift is the domain of sports. And with sports, I mean both in-person physical sports fixtures as well as esports events. And as bad as it sounds, we don’t know how long that will continue to be the state of affairs. In yet another setback for fans that many saw coming, Epic Games has today announced that it won’t hold its big-money Fortnite World Cup event in 2021. In fact, Epic Games it doesn’t plan to hold any in-person event next year.
No in-person Fortnite events in 2021
“Our intent is to eventually hold global in-person tournaments again, but our priority for any such event is the health and safety of our players and staff. With so much still unknown about what is practical and safe, we do not plan to hold in-person events in 2021, including a Fortnite World Cup. We will continue to provide online competitions throughout 2021 with the hopes that physical events, in some form, can return at some point in the future,” said the blog post.
While in-person events, including Fortnite World Cup, have been nixed for the year 2021, Epic Games has promised to host multiple online tournaments to make up for it. The company revealed that it is currently scheduling more weekly tournaments, unique tournaments, and Creator Cups for next year. To recall, the inaugural Fortnite World Cup in 2019 was one of the biggest esports events of the year and had a prize pool of a cool $30 million.
More weekly tournaments and Creator Cups
While the party size has been standardized to Trios for the Fortnite Champion Series (FNCS) – the key ranking system for competitive Fortnite – Epic Games has promised a lot more competitive stuff is in the pipeline than just Trios. The studio is also implementing the new Bars for competitive playlists and will also be listening to feedback from players on how the new gameplay mechanics in the latest season fan out for Fortnite’s competitive gaming space.