Epic announces in-game tournament: Scallywag Duos Cup

Epic has announced a new in-game tournament for Fortnite, the Scallywag Duos Cup. This tournament will feature a prize pool of $100,000. It’s taking place entirely in-game, with an entirely open process for qualifying players. Epic is mainly treating it as something of a test run for their payment system.

This tournament marks a change from previous events by being played entirely within the game. The tournament will be loaded up straight from the Fortnite client, allowing players to compete and attempt to win some of the prize pool from home. This should help Epic perfect this system before they begin the qualifying rounds for their major tournaments World Cup this year. Epic is aiming to give away $1,000,000 each week starting from April 13th. Getting this system working is pretty important before this launch.

The Scallywag Duos Cup follows invitational tournaments designed to test out their broadcasting equipment. The tournament is going to have a massive entry roster of 3,000 players. These players are going to be selected from another in-game event, this one is for qualifying. The Solo or Duo Gauntlet is another in-game event that will rank players. It is designed to weed the potential player pool down but how it will rank players has been left ambiguous.

Duos Only

The Scallywag Cup is a duos only event, at least at the moment. There will be two duos events, on March 16th and 17th. This $100,000 prize pool will be spread across all regions and areas. The overall tournament will combine players from all regions, but the qualifying Gauntlet is likely to be restricted to specific servers and regions. Because of the wider player pool, the actual prizes individuals will walk away with are going to be significantly less than the amounts Epic plans to distribute in its qualifying rounds for the Fortnite World Cup.

More information, such as specific rules and point breakdowns, are currently unknown and likely what be made clear until right before the tournament. Epic might be continuing with their recent habit of randomly pairing up Duos partners. However, this could quickly become unwieldy given that this event is being played only in the in-game lobby. Although the addition of a ping system in the recent update, Fortnite season 8, goes some way to help keeping random duos co-ordinated.

At the moment the only event announced is Duos. However, Epic has left a bit of wiggle room to add a solos or squads tournament at a later date. These tournaments could happen between the Duos event and April 13th, especially given Epic’s compulsive need to test things. Fortnite has recently added a lot of content and upgrades that specifically suit squads, so it’s possible we might see a squads Scallywag Cup at some point in the future.

This event is going to be a bit more low-key than recent tournaments ESL Katowice. However, it’s a great chance for ordinary players to get involved and test their skills against the best competitive Fortnite players. For established Duos, this event is a fantastic chance to get some high-level practice in. This is especially helpful for teams who weren’t given access to the controversial custom games by Epic.