Video Credit: IGN News
Just today, Epic Games announced that they’ll be hosting the Summer Skirmish series, an 8-week series of online Fortnite competitions in which a massive 8 million in prize money will be awarded. This is the first major step toward Fortnite Esports, and with so much money on the line, it’s sure to attract the attention of pro teams and casual players alike.
Competition will start this weekend, which features a $250,000 Duos tournament. Participants have been invited by Epic themselves, and are people who are “community creators and Fortnite players who have demonstrated their competitive prowess”. And to keep things interesting, the format and competitors of each tournament will vary each week.
However, what’s notable is that none of the professional Fortnite FaZe Clan members were invited to this weekend’s duo tournament, which is interesting considering FaZe clan has been one of the most dominant professional teams in Fortnite so far, with FaZe Tfue and FaZe Cloak already winning 4 Fortnite Friday duo tournaments and other FaZe duos performing well also.
While the format of the $250,000 tournament has not yet been released, it’s speculated that it will have a more traditional format than Keemstar and UMG Online’s Fortnite Friday tournaments, similar to that of the Fortnite Pro-Am.
Regardless of everything, Summer Skirmish is coming soon, and the exciting path towards Fortnite Esports is finally becoming real.