An ode to one of the most amazing esport events that seems to be coming to an end.
Week 11 of Fortnite Friday is canceled. It happens to be at the same time as Epic Games’ Summer Skirmish solo tournament, but this wasn't supposed to mean that Fortnite Friday wasn't viable. I purely think from an entertainment perspective, with the way that both tournaments are structured, Fortnite Friday creates the best entertainment.
Unfortunately, because Epic Games has capped Fortnite Friday in terms of prize funds, they have the ability to pull more of the best players when they’re at the same time. Money talks, and that means that more players will probably want to play in Summer Skirmish this week.
All of this led to Keemstar canceling this week’s tournament.
[embed]https://twitter.com/KEEMSTAR/status/1020127418848165888[/embed]
This was then shortly followed up by UMG Events announcing that their partnership with Fortnite Friday had ended.
[embed]https://twitter.com/UMGEvents/status/1020135889681485826[/embed]
All of this is strange. It felt like it was inevitable with Epic capping the tournament and having their own tournaments for much more money. However, it still feels strange and is really disappointing.
The hope is that Keemstar finds another partner to run the tournament with and moves it to Sundays to become the premiere Sunday tournament. That way becoming somewhat of a permanent fixture in the community.
The long term success of this tournament was always strange because even if they kept a solid time block and partnership the money was always going to be a problem. As bigger players start making more money in Epic tournaments it really remains seen how well a 20k tournament would do in light of a $500,000 Epic Games run tournament.
Writing about and watching this tournament has been amazing. I’ve enjoyed every week of Fortnite Friday thus far. My hope is that Epic gets their crap together and realizes what was so amazing about Fortnite Friday and is able to inject it into their own tournaments. Because until that happens, Fortnite Friday will remain the peak of Fortnite esports.
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