Thanks to its massive player fanbase, the first-ever Fortnite World Cup Finals attracted attention and dollars on par with traditional sports events:
This is an excerpt from a story delivered exclusively to Business Insider Intelligence Digital Media Briefing subscribers.This past weekend Epic Games hosted the first-ever Fortnite World Cup Finals in NYC, which I attended, and will write up in greater detail later this week.Fortnite has taken the world by storm, garnering 250 million players worldwide in under two years, and quickly cementing itself — especially after this tournament — as a top tier game in esports.
In part, Fortnite is so successful because of its highly engaging nature, which includes almost weekly updates and rollouts of new features, requiring a high level of commitment for players to stay on top of their game. Those updates include many in-game purchases, which have allowed Epic to monetize the game: The developer madeoff of Fortnite in 2018 alone, making it the first free game to pull in a billion in its first year.
As a result of its massive player and fanbase, Fortnite World Cup attracted attention and dollars on par with traditional sports events: Epic doled out $100 million in prize money over the course of the qualifiers and finals, a move many fans considered a representation of the firm giving back to its fervent community. Of that $100 million, $30 million was awarded to players during the three-day finals, with the top prize sitting at $3 million.
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