Twitch star streamer Michael “shroud” Grzesiek rarely plays Fortnite: Battle Royale on stream. That doesn’t stop him from recognizing the game as the best one for aspiring professional players to invest their time in if they want to play a battle royale at top level.
“It’s just free money,” shroud said. “Even if you lose, you win. Not many games are like that, but Fortnite is one of them.”
Shroud said Fortnite is the best bet for these players because of how much money developer Epic Games has been putting in its professional competitions.
“They don’t know how to make their game, and they just have this pile of cash and are like: Play!”, shroud said. “That’s a good one for sure.”
Epic has indeed been putting a lot of money in Fortnite tournaments. The company announced $100 million in prize pools for the game’s first year of professional competition, and just the upcoming Fortnite World Cup on July 26 will give players $10 million in the Solo finals and $20 million in the Duos finals. The company also hosts online tournaments in every region from time to time within the game’s own competitive system with prize money for lots of players.
Other battle royale games that shroud plays on Twitch, such as Apex Legends, are still in their early days of professional competition and have seen little investment from their developers. The biggest Apex tournament today is the FACEIT Pro League, and it’s the only one that’s licensed by Respawn Entertainment. The developer has yet to provide a way for players to create custom lobbies for tournament matches.
PUBG also has several licensed leagues spread around some regions, but none of them has a prize pool that comes close to what Epic has been offering for Fortnite.
