Fortnite Dev Pledges $20 Million In Prize Money For 2021 Tournaments

Epic Games continues to invest in the Fortnite competitive gaming scene, this week pledging a whopping $20 million for the Fortnite Champion Series (FNCS).

That is up from a $17 million prize pool last year, but not more than the $30 million that was at stake for the 2019 edition of the tournament series.

There will be four FNCS seasons for the 2021 series, each featuring a $3 million prize pool, for a total of $12 million across the four seasons. There will also be mid-year and end-of-year tournaments where the top players from each region will compete for a further $8 million in prize money. More details on these events will be shared at a later date.

Epic is making a series of changes to the FNCS for 2021 based on player feedback, one of which is that matches will take place across platforms, so teammates don't need to be on the same platform to compete together. The tournament series begins in February, culminating with the Finals over the March 12-14 weekend. All matches will be played remotely.

There will also be a series of changes to the gameplay that are specific to FNCS. These include:

• Addition of Lever Action Shotgun
• Vaulted Rift Fish
• Vaulted Shockwave Grenades
• Removal of Elevators and IO Guards
• Sand tunneling will remain in competitive playlists and tournaments as long as it remains in the core playlists, as it is a major feature of this Season’s map.
• We’ve made adjustments to the amount of Bars players start with in competitive playlists. We’ll continue to monitor how the Bars system fits in competitive, and will make adjustments as necessary.

Check out the full blog post from Epic Games to learn more about the FNCS and Fortnite's competitive scene in general. In other Fortnite news, you can now kill the Predator to unlock its skin.