‘Fortnite’ Tournaments Are Getting Updated With New Features

Fortnite’s tournaments have been absent for a while with no competitions scheduled as of late after the end of the Winter Royale, but Epic Games said this absence is due to the developer preparing to update the system with new features.

Epic Games took to Fortnite’s most active subreddit to provide more info on the lack of tournaments since the end of the Winter Royale. The developer acknowledged that there’d been questions from the community regarding when the tournaments would be back and previewed some of what’s to come in January. A new backend system for the tournaments will bring on the release of in-game leaderboards, more events, and other features related to the competitive scene.

“During January we’ll be transitioning to a new tournament backend system which will help enable features such as live in-game leaderboards during events, support for tournaments to take place across multiple knockout rounds, and allow us to create a richer variety of events to keep the experience fresh and exciting,” Epic Games said on Reddit about its plans for the tournaments. “Fewer in-game tournaments will be scheduled in early January as we transition to the new backend system and test the new functionality, but we anticipate quickly ramping up to a full tournament offering utilizing the new features.”

Epic Games also toted the large number of players who participated in the Winter Royale tournament said over 9 million players played in North America and Europe in the two-day qualifiers period alone. Like the Winter Royale and the seasonal tournaments before, it, Epic Games said it also plans on bringing more of these events to the community later on.

“We’re really excited to run more events like this in the future, providing players with opportunities to earn recognition by competing directly alongside the best of the best in Fortnite,” Epic Games said.

The flow of the Winter Royale tournament that took place in December was thrown off in a big way by the Infinity Blade weapon as seen in the clip above, so those future events hopefully won’t feature the same issues. Epic Games added the weapon that could eliminate opponents with ease and granted its users buffs to keep them alive at the same time that the tournament was going on, a tournament which offered millions in prizes.

No release date for the new tournament system was provided, but the update is expected to roll out in January.