Everything had been smooth sailing for Epic Games’ Fortnite over the last couple months, with astronomically higher player-counts and cultural pervasiveness we haven’t seen since Pokémon Go launched, but the game’s latest esports tournament probably wasn’t what the company was hoping for.
The Summer Skirmish Series is an eight-week event mixing together “community creators” and particularly skilled Fortnite players, with $8 million in prize money up for grabs. It began with a duos tournament consisting of 50 teams battling it out in battle royale mode, with $50,000 going to the top team after 10 consecutive matches.
According to ESPN, however, the matches used North American servers despite having players from all around the world, and they ran into issues with lag — some players weren’t even able to move at all and were killed before having a chance to defend themselves. Epic Games promised that it would try to resolve these issues in future Summer Skirmish Series matches, and that each week will use a different game format. Solo matches should be particularly interesting, though we wouldn’t mind bizarre win requirements such as building the tallest structure without it being destroyed.
Epic Games recently kicked off the fifth season of Fortnite, which brought several changes to the enormous battle royale map. These include a desert are called “Paradise Palms” where “Moisty Mire” used to be located, as well as the “Lazy Links” golf course in place of “Anarchy Acres.” To go along with the golf course, a special All-Terrain Kart vehicle was also added, giving you and your team the opportunity to quickly move into position and kill someone or just really mess with them on the backswing.
The dimensional rifts we saw opening in the map have also been doing some bizarre things, transporting objects like the Durr Burger sign to different locations. We can only assume aliens are the culprit, and we hope to blast the extraterrestrial invaders in the future … maybe.
Fortnite is now available on Xbox One, PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch, PC, Mac, and iOS. An Android release is scheduled to arrive later this summer. The game supports cross-platform play between consoles, computers, and mobile devices.
