Top earners of Fortnite revealed

It’s no secret that pro esports can be a great way to make a living. Teams tour the globe, take part in fierce competition and get treated like kings. In return, there is hours and hours of hard work and practice they must undergo, to keep themselves at the top. Still, it’s worth it and nowadays saying you’re a pro gamer, doesn’t mean you just really like playing games. It means there’s a lucrative career sitting behind you.

Most fans are familiar with esports like League of Legends and even Counter Strike: Global Offensive as good money earners, with top prizes in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. Newest game to the table on this front though is Fortnite, and as we’ve now been able to see thanks to publishing by Dexerto, even this is a game you can make a solid living out of.

We’re not talking measly pay checks either with top spot holder Bizzle, who hails from the US, making $322,000 from tournament games of Fortnite so far. Definitely not a bad way to spend your time, especially if you love the game. Some tournament prizes didn’t come courtesy of Epic directly, but the majority have. Even if you factor that in, there’s still a handsome salary to be had from the developers directly for jumping out of the party bus.

Bringing up second and third spots in the rankings are also US based Poach with $277,275 and Morgausse with the tidy sum of $250,000. This year tournaments were fairly haphazard and prize money from Epic while good, certainly couldn’t compete with the others in the big leagues. That’s even with the twentieth highest earning player, TheVic, coming in at $104,479.

For those who are curious, the first non-US based player on the table is Mitr0, hailing from the Netherlands and still pocketing a grand pay packet of $176,764. So while the prizes may not have been the highest in the world, the tournaments appealed to a global audience and is likely to continue doing so. Some fans are lamenting that Fortnite, despite its popularity did not splash out on even larger tournament prizes to bring in even more players from around the world.

All of that is set to change though, next year sees a new round of tournaments and Epic have already promised a whopping £100 million in tournament prizes across various competitions. If ever there was a time to study up and consider turning pro at one of the most enjoyable battle royale games out there, it’s now.

Potential earnings are hard to chart, a lot will depend on each individual tournament, player performance. and how the organizers decide to split their prize money. Still, it just goes to show that Fortnite is still going strong and gaining more fans every day. With Epic throwing down some serious money to draw in the big players, it promises to be another year of nail biting, sharpshooting action over the coming months.