Fortnite will be featured in this year’s Olympic Esports Series as part of an International Shooting Sport Federation, the International Olympic Committee announced this week. What this means is that there will be a shooting competition that takes place in Fortnite as part of the Olympics with 12 different players from Fortnite’s competitive scene taking part. It’s a first for Fortnite, but the event itself probably isn’t going to play out how you’d expect given that this isn’t actually going to be a battle royale competition and will instead play out on an island created for this occasion.
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The shooting competition in Fortnite will be just that: a shooting competition, not a last-person-standing match. The IOC announced this week that the esport event will take place on “a special International Shooting Sport Federation Island” that’s been built in Fortnite for the occasion.
“The competition will be an invitational event and involve 12 players from the Fortnite Champion Series,” the IOC said. “It will feature a special International Shooting Sport Federation Island created in Fortnite, which will be designed to reflect sport shooting competition. Players will be tested on their target aiming accuracy, just as sport shooters would in competition.”
Again, not what Fortnite players would expect from an Olympic competition featuring the game, and probably not the most entertaining version of Fortnite that we could see, but it’s at least still being included in the esports events. It’ll join other games that’ll be played to simulate their real-life counterparts, too. With Fortnite now included, 10 different games will be part of the esports series.
“Sport shooting and the competition created in Fortnite join archery (Tic Tac Bow), baseball (WBSC eBaseball™: Power Pros), chess (Chess.com), cycling (Zwift), dance sport (Just Dance), motorsport (Gran Turismo 7), sailing (Virtual Regatta), taekwondo (Virtual Taekwondo), and tennis (Tennis Clash) in the Olympic Esports Series, taking place in Singapore’s Suntec Centre.”
The Olympic Esports Finals will take place from June 22-25 with people able to watch online on the Olympics site where the competitions will be streamed.
