Mentioned in this article Games: Fortnite

Daniel “Keemstar” Keem canceled Friday Fortnite due to player dropping from the event.

The cancellation comes after Friday competition was added to Epic’s Summer Skirmish.

Epic made changes to its Summer Skirmish after a less than stellar debut to the series.

Daniel “Keemstar” Keem has canceled this week’s Friday Fortnite event after numerous players dropped from the competition to play in Epic Games’ Summer Skirmish, set to be played at the same time.

Keem took to Twitter to say Epic informed everyone about the competition at the last minute. He also noted that Epic capped the prize pool he was allowed to give out to players at $20,000, while they themselves are doling out a $500,000 prize. For comparison, Keem’s Realm Royale tournament, which debuted on Thursday night, touted a $100,000 prize pool.

While Keem expressed displeasure with Epic’s communication regarding its Friday event, he promised to keep Friday Fortnite going despite what he called a “very big misunderstanding.” However, as more and more competitors were invited to Epic’s Summer Skirmish—which, again, touted a significantly larger prize pool—Keem seemingly had no alternative. With the cancellation of the event, UMG Events also took to Twitter to officially announce that its role in hosting Friday Fortnite has ended.

Epic yesterday officially announced that this week’s Summer Skirmish would be played across Friday and Saturday after last week’s event was cut short due to server issues. Reaction to last week’s lag-laden competition forced Epic to release a statement detailing how server issues could have come because of the high number of players that were staying alive late into matches.

To combat those server issues this week, Epic’s event will not be played on a private server. Instead, solo competitors will play on public servers. Plus, more emphasis will be put on getting eliminations to score points, encouraging more daring play. This decision seemingly was also made to try to add more flare to the event that, at times, moved at a snail’s pace.