Epic Games Experiencing Trouble With the Fortnite World Cup

Fortnite World Cup tournament qualifiers started on 13th April and they are planned to continue for nine weeks. Winners will be able to cash in from a million dollar prize pool. The first ever Fortnite World Cup that every player from 13 up can qualify is offering an unbelievable $100 million in prizes that will be split between many events. The announcement by Epic Games got many people excited as they want to try their chance of winning. The organization of this kind of tournament must be in perfect order all the time otherwise will result in a catastrophic disaster. Considering that this is the first world cup tournament that Epic organized, we aren’t surprised to see some issues at the start.

Epic games had some issues concerning the launch of Fortnite World Cup already and it all started with visual issues when the player’s scores appeared to be reseted to zero. While the points were visually zero, Epic Games responded that the scores were being tracked correctly on the tournament leaderboard. Furthermore, they urged competitors to restart their client so the issue resolves itself. Since that, they started also having problems with a small portion of players, after their Victory Royale scores wouldn’t show up on the leaderboard.

They responded by updating their backend to greatly reduce the likelihood of this happening ever again. As these issues were resolved they made a statement that about 975 scores were adjusted due to these issues. This resulted in other competitors advancing in EU Week 1 Finals. Finally, after these affairs, it is safe to assume that they didn’t have a smooth launch of the Fortnite World Cup.

So, with all those visual and frankly “minor” speed bumps of bugs, Epic was shocked by what followed next. And their integrity was in question. Epic Games realized that in Week 1 Solo players were competing in multiple regions throughout the tournament. Pros were account sharing in the course of the tournament, people were teaming in solo matchmaking. And if that wasn’t enough, a cheater was caught five minutes after playing in the tournament for using cheat software during the Semi-Finals.

Furthermore, a pro disconnected intentionally to avoid giving points to an enemy. It was a rough beginning. Epic Games took action by banning 1163 account for 14 days for swapping regions. This includes 196 prizes who had to forfeit their winnings. Also, about 48 accounts were sanctioned and banned for 14 days for account sharing, including 9 prize winners. Solo competitors who teamed up with enemies (8 players) were also banned. The player who used Third-Party software was permanently banned. And a 3-day ban for the pro for intentionally disconnecting.

Real-time teaming detection algorithm was implemented in competitive play, in tournaments and also Arenas. This had been only an addition to the offline teaming detection they already had in place. They are working on improving the algorithm so they can enable it in all game modes while allowing fun, playful interactions between players.

After all these big problems, Epic Games encouraged people to report anything that they find as an issue to competitive integrity. Contact can be done through the player support team.
Epic games resolved any mishaps professionally and effectively. This will also serve as an eye-opener for future competitive events. They urgee players to behave and keep the competitive atmosphere morally and ethically.

The event’s finals will take place in New York on July 26-28. Details have not yet been released about the final. People are speculating that one-day solos will be held, second-day duos and last day for finals, but this is by taking into consideration the format of the last tournament. This tournament will spread across three different Fortnite seasons since season 9 will start just before week 5. And after 70 days, (the week before Fortnite World Cup Open final) season 10 will be launched. It is not yet clear how Epic Games would implement huge game changes.

In conclusion, it is safe to say that the first Fortnite World Cup feels like a ‘beta edition’ , after experiencing these minor setbacks. Nonetheless, now that every problem seems to have been sorted out by Epic, we can enjoy the competition of the tournament and we are eager to know who will edge this horse race and be crowned the first World Cup Fortnite champion.

Author: Mario Petkovski