Epic Games has announced that the best Fortnite players in the world will soon be able to compete for a prize pool consisting of $100 million. The developer announced that their popular free-to-play third-person shooter will soon have a competitive season that will begin in 2018 and last into 2019. The competitive scene will focus on the game's Battle Royale mode, and Epic says that they want to empower talented players to compete against the best.

Released late last year on consoles and PC, Fortnite: Battle Royale has quickly become a phenomenon thanks to its accessible Battle Royale mode. By iterating upon the formula seen in H1Z1 and PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds, the studio has managed to create a unique survival game that has a large skills ceiling thanks to it allowing players to build custom objects in-game. Top-level play has largely been seen on Twitch streams, but it now has a chance to thrive under a competitive scene.

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While Epic Games has revealed the large prize pool for their upcoming Fortnite eSports competitions, they haven't detailed exactly how players will earn it. There's no official competitive league yet, and they haven't revealed their exact plans. However, they did ensure players that their approach to eSports will focus on inclusiveness, and that they want it to be "focused on the joy of playing and watching the game." More concrete details are expected to be announced in the near future.

Fortnite Battle Royale artwork

Considering how popular Fortnite is on Twitch, moving into the eSports scene in an official capacity is a smart move by Epic Games. It will definitely require some big tweaks to the game, and traditionally, Battle Royale titles haven't been huge on a competitive scene (the H1Z1 Pro League is attempting to change all that), but these are the necessary first steps. It will certainly be exciting to see what type of tools they add to the shooter in order to aid the competitive community, and to see how the game will help determine who the best players are.

This is also great news for those that are talented at Fortnite as their passion may soon turn into a huge money endeavor. Epic Games clearly is taking it seriously by offering up $100 million as the initial prize pool for the first season. Some gamers are about to get some major money from playing the shooter, and it'll be intriguing to see how the money is split between the 100 participants per match.

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Source: Epic Games