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Fortnite: Can the World Cup return in 2022?

By Alexander Covell

NEW YORK, NEW YORK - JULY 28: Kyle “Bugha” Giersdorf celebrates after winning the Fortnite World Cup solo final at Arthur Ashe Stadium on July 28, 2019 in New York City. (Photo by Mike Stobe/Getty Images)
NEW YORK, NEW YORK - JULY 28: Kyle “Bugha” Giersdorf celebrates after winning the Fortnite World Cup solo final at Arthur Ashe Stadium on July 28, 2019 in New York City. (Photo by Mike Stobe/Getty Images) /
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We just passed the two-year anniversary of Fortnite’s biggest competitive event, the Fortnite World Cup. Since dishing out over $30 million to the qualified competitors, the tournament scene hasn’t been the same since COVID-19 took over the world in 2020.

Fortnite: Can the World Cup return in 2022?

After a silence about in-person events returning, news surfaced on May 31st surrounding the potential return of Fortnite coming back to LAN.

According to a press release by regional tournament organizer Iowa Esports, “they [Epic Games] do not plan to allow in-person events until Q2 2022, or when the global impact from COVID-19 has diminished”.

Iowa Esports planned on hosting a $10,000 tournament in Kansas on the weekend of June 12th. A few weeks prior to the event, Epic Games reached out with the above statement. Epic’s ruling on COVID-19 hasn’t changed but at least we received clarification on when in-person events could return.

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Epic Games have tried to keep the competitive scene alive by offering a mixture of online events. Since COVID-19, the prize pools and integrity really haven’t had the same vibe. Along with other major esports, ping is the nature of the game. Naturally, someone with lower ping is going to be more flawless at building & editing while also being able to take walls more effortlessly. This is the importance of having LAN events, since competitors have to be stacked up against each other with no ping advantage based on their proximity to a Fortnite server (the closer you are to the server means lower ping). LAN events also give players something to strive for. We’ve heard fussing from top pros that with the prize pools being so low and not having in-person events has made the game very hard to grind.

It’s unknown what Epic Games has planned for the future but with the first Fortnite World Cup being such a success, we would assume that they’re planning something huge once they return to in-person events. We’ve seen esports like Call of Duty & Valorant return to LAN events, so maybe we’ll see Fortnite sooner than Q2 2022.

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