Epic Games has allegedly failed to pay competitive Fortnite players prize money

Epic Games allegedly owes prize money to several Fortnite: Battle Royale competitors, players say.

A thread in the Fortnite Competitive Reddit shows screenshots and allegations from pro players who said in May that Epic hadn’t paid them yet for tournaments like pre-World Cup test events, Secret Skirmish in February, and even mid-2018 competitions like Summer Skirmish. Big names from Fnatic, TSM, E11, and Team Secret claimed on Twitter in mid-May they hadn’t been paid for some tournaments yet, and the author of the post claims these complaints still hold in a few competitive Discord communities.

“Some of these payouts even exceed $9,000,” the author wrote. “Still, these players are being ignored despite being proactive. Epic has even gone so far as to say that certain players were never at the event, when it’s quite easy to prove.”

The author claims that players have been complaining about a lack of communication from some Epic employees who are in charge of dealing with professional players and competitions. They say the employees are ignoring players’ messages when they reach out for clarification.

An Epic employee wrote in the thread that the company has a blog post that it’s updating regularly with information about payments. A table in it shows that payments from the Summer Skirmish until the Fortnite World Cup Warmup are already being sent out, while prize money from the World Cup Qualifiers have yet to start being paid because Epic is reviewing the results.

Epic has a total 43,285 payments promised to players due to professional competitions that started in July 2018 with the Summer Skirmish. The company says it’s sent out 4,398, about 10 percent of the total, and is waiting for player confirmation to send another 1,687. Epic is holding back 37,200 payments (about 86 percent of what’s promised), all related to the Fortnite World Cup Qualifiers, for after it fully reviews the results to filter out cheaters and ineligible players.

The Fortnite World Cup rules say that players who earn prize money in the qualifiers have 45 days to send valid payment information to Epic Games. If they fail to do so, Epic may refuse to pay them without choosing another player to receive the prize. In this case, Epic says it’ll either add that prize money to a future event or donate it to charity.

It’s unclear at this time if players who have complained about delays have sent their payment information to Epic correctly.