COVID-19 fear strikes down yet another major esports tournament. The biggest esports event in the world, the Fortnite World Cup 2020, is officially canceled. The announcement was made with Epic Games citing the usual pandemic concerns and organizing difficulties - especially when their employees have to work from home.

Last year's Fortnite World Cup was probably the biggest Esports event ever created - its popularity is unheard of.

The announcement was published on their official Fortnite Twitter account. Furthermore, all other Fortnite tournaments for the rest of the year would be held online. The biggest level would be regional - as there would be connection problems otherwise. The company further stated that they are not sure when international or regional LAN events would be back, but they hope that it would be possible to host the next Fortnite World Cup for 2021.

The official announcement tweet from Fortnite's Competitive Esports channel.

Last year's Fortnite World Cup was the biggest esports event, with a total prize pool of 40 million dollars. This includes a 3 million dollar prize for Bugha, the 16-years-old solo tournament champion. The event pulled in over 2 million concurrent viewers.
Bugha, last year's solo tournament champion. Fortnite has categories for both Team and Solo, unlike other battle royales like PUBG.

Other Fortnite tournaments such as the Fortnite Champion Series (FNCS) will continue as normal, along with the smaller competitive matches "Cash Cups" in order to keep the pro-scene alive. The first competition of the FNCS would start today, on Fortnite's YouTube and Twitch channels. Epic has done pretty well so far in organizing online events - its in-game Travis Scott concerts pulled an outstanding 12.3 million concurrent fans. Because of that, we can be pretty sure that their online events this year would be high-effort.

Interested in more of our posts related to video games? Please check out this post for the most viewed gaming events of 2019.