After the close of the “Solo Showdown” limited-time event today (May 21), Epic Games—the developers of Fortnite Battle Royale—announced that competitive play is finally coming to Fortnite.
“Solo Showdown” seems to have been a trial run of new competitive play that won’t be limited to just one week of stress. In a blog post today, Epic Games announced that it will “provide $100,000,000 to fund prize pools for Fortnite competitions” in 2018-2019. Epic went on to say that details about the nature of the competitions and the eligible platforms are still to come, but this is the first major announcement about Fortnite entering the competitive play scene since its launch last year.
Ranked play would separate Fortnite players based on skill, and is a precursor to the game’s potential domination of the esport industry, which is approaching annual revenues of over $1 billion.