Fortnite Winter Royale $1m Competition Is Open To All Players

Epic Games has announced Winter Royale, an open competition with a $1 million prize pool. Unlike many of the tournaments, Winter Royale is is open to all players; it is described as a test event ahead of next year's Fortnite World Cup. Winter Royale will involve two parts, one being a qualifiers event and the second being the finals.

Winter Royale is a competition designed to emulate the Fortnite World Cup Qualification process, Epic Games explained today. The test event will serve to help the company get the data and experience it needs to pave the way for an issue-free World Cup event in 2019.

This is the first Fortnite open competition to feature cash prizes, giving unknown and lesser known players the chance to battle it out for big prizes. A similar format has previously existed with a limitation to invited players. The $1,000,000 figure is the total of all cash prizes offered across both the qualifier rounds and the finals.

During the Qualifiers, Epic says that all players will have multiple chances to get a high score. The highest score achieved during the qualifier rounds will be the one that Epic counts. The same game settings will be used as the current Pop-Up Cups, which will also help the company test ahead of the World Cup event.

Epic says it will verify the top players from both the EU and NA regions. The players who are found to be eligible will then get invitations to compete in the Winter Royale Finals for their own region. Those outside of the EU and NA won't be able to participate, but Epic says it is planning to offer tournaments in other regions in the future.

The qualifiers start on November 24 and will last through the 25th. The finals games will first take place in Europe from November 30 to December 1, followed by in North America from December 11 to December 12.