Epic Games push back World Cup qualifiers after community backlash
Epic GamesEpic Games have announced that the Fortnite World Cup Semi-Finals and Grand Finals will be pushed back to a new date after numerous complaints from pros started to mount.
Fortnite Battle Royale pros have a packed month of June when it comes to tournaments with big prize pools. The Celebrity Pro-Am and the last weeks of World Cup qualifiers for duos were in danger of overlapping.
Pro player Dennis ‘Cloak’ Lepore pointed out that the conflicting schedules might have made some people choose between attending the Summer Block Party tournament or taking their last shot at qualifying for the Fortnite World Cup Finals in New York City.
Just found out E3 pro-am tourney is during the last duo week WC qualifier? Whose bright idea was that LOL @EpicGames
— Creator code: cloakzy (@cloakzy) June 2, 2019
In a June 5 announcement, the Fortnite World Cup organizers made a change to the schedule which will hopefully alleviate any of the concerns that people might have had going into the tournament season.
“Hey Fortnite World Cup Competitors,” Producer at Epic Games Matt ‘Loomin’ Layman said. “We are rescheduling the Week 10 Fortnite World Cup Online Open. The Semi-Finals will now take place on Thursday, June 20th. The Finals will take place on Friday, June 21st.”
Moreover, Loomin said that the “start time for each region will begin one hour later than the regular scheduled tournaments,” so players will want to keep that in mind to show up on time.
Finally, the prize pool for Week 9 and Week 10 will be doubling to a total of $2,000,000. But it’s important to note that the schedule and timing for Week 9 will stay the same.
The Fortnite Battle Royale community were loud about their concerns that the World Cup qualifiers and Pro-Am were overlapping.
Ninja, Cloak and more had major issues with Fortnite World Cup scheduling
During his May 3 stream, the world’s most famous gamer Tyler ‘Ninja’ Blevins expressed his ire against scheduling and even explained why he wanted out of the Pro-Am.
“I’m trying to get out of it,” the Detroit native said. “It’s a whole thing dude. I’m not trying to get out of it, I still want to be a part of it, but in a way that I can still play on Sunday.”
Cloak wasn’t agreeing with the scheduling either, as he and many others pointed out the conflicts between the two events on social medias.
Now that Epic Games have pushed back the dates of their qualifiers, hopefully that’ll mean the pros will be able to lock in and perform their best on both events.