This week’s Friday Fortnite tournament has been canceled due to a scheduling conflict with Epic Games’ own Summer Skirmish series.
Friday Fortnite has been a staple over the past few months, run by YouTuber Daniel “Keemstar” Keem and UMG Events. It pits top players in teams of two against each other to see who can finish with the most eliminations, with a $20,000 prize pool.
This week, however, Epic Games has decided to run its second of eight Summer Skirmish events on Friday and Saturday. The prize pool for this week’s Solos event is $500,000. Naturally, the bigger prize pool attracted the players.
Keemstar took to Twitter to explain that Epic “told everyone last minute” about this week’s Summer Skirmish, and that it “invited all” of the players set to compete in Friday Fortnite. Keemstar initially voiced his displeasure in a Twitter video on Wednesday, but claimed that his event would still go ahead. Since then, Epic apparently invited the bulk of the top tier players and content creators to instead compete in Summer Skirmish.
This seems like a classic scenario of a big fish being eaten by a bigger fish. Epic Games has pledged $100 million for Fortnite esports prize pools. Keemstar, however, says that Friday Fortnite has been “capped” at $20,000, and that he is not allowed to offer a bigger prize pool.
The future of Friday Fortnite is also unclear. UMG Events tweeted yesterday that its role in the event has ended. Don’t feel too bad for Keemstar, though. His $100,000 Realm Royale tournament series had its first event yesterday, with more scheduled for the future.
