Epic Games explains why the first Summer Skirmish tournament failed

The first week's event was cut short, but why didn't it work out?
Image via Epic Games

The first official online event for Fortnite: Battle Royale failed to live up to expectations—and the developers are even admitting it was a poor start to Fortnite esports.

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On July 14, Epic Games held the first of eight tournaments in its online Summer Skirmish series. Some of the most popular and talented players in the world competed in the $250,000 Duos competition, but after just four of the scheduled 10 games, Epic shut down the tournament due to server lag.

Epic offered an explanation for why things went wrong in a blog post earlier today, saying a shift in gameplay strategy and an unexpected amount of in-game spectators caused the disappointing experience for both players and viewers.

Image via Epic Games

With so much money at stake and no incentive to play aggressively, the number of players still alive late in the game was much higher than in normal games. In addition to the more living players, there were more players that stuck around to spectate after dying.

To illustrate its point, Epic released a graph comparing the number of players alive at certain points in the Summer Skirmish games compared to normal matchmaking games. At a time when 10 players would usually be alive in a regular game, 50 were still competing in the Summer Skirmish. And when a winner would usually be crowned in a game, 30 people were still alive in the Summer Skirmish match.

These factors, accompanied by the “amount of dense building that occurred late in the matches” really affected the server performance to the point that players could not move properly.

Related: Fortnite’s first Summer Skirmish event showed that the game isn’t quite ready for primetime esports

The developers addressed the spectating experience as well, confirming the spectator tool that was shown off at the Fortnite Celebrity Pro-Am in June is not ready to be used in the live environment.

As for the format, which has been a highly-debated topic in the esports community, Epic said it’s “eager to mix up formats to keep things exciting and entertaining during the Summer Skirmish series.”

Some have suggested adding an incentive for eliminations or even solely basing the game’s result on who has the most eliminations—something the weekly Friday Fortnite tournaments have done to positive feedback.

This week’s tournament will reportedly be a $500,000 Solo event, but Epic has not confirmed the details. It has said the tournament will be played in a public environment rather than a private server like last week’s event, however.


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Preston Byers
Dot Esports associate editor. Co-host of the Ego Chall Podcast. Since discovering esports through the 2013 Call of Duty Championship, Preston has pursued a career in esports and gaming. He graduated from Youngstown State University with a bachelor's degree in journalism in 2021.