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‘Fortnite’ E3 tournament was a taste of its esports future
As Fortnite continues to suck in gamers by the millions, Epic Games has worked hard to keep the game fresh and entertaining, whether players are dropping in for the first or thousandth time. But behind the scenes it's also putting the finishing touches on its plans for turning Fortnite into a competitive sport. Last month, it committed more than $100 million into Fortnite tournament prize pools and announced its first official esports event: the Fortnite Pro-Am. Popular streamers and YouTubers -- with backgrounds in PUBG, League of Legends, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, Call of Duty and, of course, Fortnite -- joined actors, sports stars and musicians at E3 for a 50-team, 100-person battle royale. Tyler "Ninja" Blevins, the biggest personality in competitive esports right now (helps when you stream with hip-hop megastar Drake), buddied up with EDM DJ Marshmello, and YouTuber Ali-A joined Fall Out Boy singer Pete Wentz while professional gamer Gotaga was accompanied by UFC fighter Demetrious Johnson in a bid to win a $3 million charity prize pool.
Epic lines up its first 'Fortnite' World Cup for late 2019
During a break before the prize round of its star-studded Fortnite Pro-Am tournament at E3 2018, Epic Games announced some information about the first Fortnite World Cup. As a cap for the 2018-2019 competitive season where it's dishing out $100 million in prizes across various tournaments, the 2019 Fortnite World Cup will begin with qualifier events that take place worldwide later this year, where the company says anyone -- and with over 125 million registered players just a year into its existence, they mean anyone -- can play and win. Details on a Code of Conduct, platform info and schedule are still TBA, but what we do know is that while there will be some squad competition, the World Cup's focus is on Solo and Duo play. Also, traditional eSports powerhouses may take a backseat, as Epic announced that unlike some other competitions it will not sell teams or franchises and that it won't allow third-party tournaments to do so either. While you wait for more info you can tune in to the Pro-Am stream, which at the time of this writing has over 700,000 live viewers on the official streams (across Twitch, Facebook, YouTube, Mixer and Twitter) watching people like Ninja, Myth, Paul George and Pete Wentz playing in pairs to win $1 million for various charities.
'Fortnite' for Switch thankfully includes native voice chat
The newly released Fortnite for Switch includes a pleasant surprise: there's built-in voice chat. Where Splatoon 2 forces you to use Nintendo's not-so-elegant Switch Online mobile app for voice, Epic Games has confirmed that you can plug any old headset into the console's headphone jack to coordinate with your Fortnite squad. The feature isn't active as we write this, but it should turn on as of June 14th.
'Fortnite' for Switch doesn't support PlayStation-linked accounts
If you're like many gamers, you rushed to download Fortnite for Switch as soon as it came out -- finally, console-quality battle royale on the road! You may be in for a crushing disappointment if you play on PS4, though. Players have discovered that the Switch version of Fortnite dosn't let you sign in with an Epic Games account linked to PSN, while Switch-first players can't sign in to the PS4 version. Sony's ban on cross-console play appears to be the likely reason, but it's particularly irksome here as this doesn't involve gameplay -- Sony won't even let you carry progress over to a competing product.
'Fortnite' comes to Nintendo Switch today
The rumors were true: Fortnite has arrived on the Nintendo Switch. As of 1PM Eastern, you can play Epic Games' battle royale shooter at home or on the move using the same console. It looks to be up to date, too, including newer Season 4 features like shopping carts. If you've been dying to play Fortnite away from home but want more than touchscreen controls, you just got your fix.
'Fortnite' gets its first vehicle: Shopping carts
For all of the things that Epic Games has delivered in its weekly Fortnite updates, vehicles have not been one of them. While both PUBG and H1Z1 already allow players to hop in a car and fast-travel across the map, Fortnite has relied on items such as Hop Rocks and Jetpacks to give gamers an advantage over their opponents. However, Epic Games isn't shy when it comes to testing out new ideas, so today it finally gave players their first taste of transportation in the form of 'shopping carts.
'PUBG' creators sue Epic Games over 'Fortnite' battle royale mode
The developers of PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds haven't been shy about accusing Epic Games of riding their bandwagon with Fortnite, and now they're taking legal action. Bluehole's PUBG Corp has confirmed that it sued Epic in South Korea this January for allegedly violating the studio's copyright with Fortnite's Battle Royale mode, particularly its interface and in-game items. Epic has declined to comment, but it's safe to say the situation is... complicated.
Official 'Fortnite' tournaments will offer $100 million in prizes
When Epic Games revealed its first, albeit limited-time, Fortnite ranked play mode last week, it promised more details on competitive play would arrive soon. We now know a little more on Fortnite's future in the professional ranks -- Epic is pumping $100 million into tournament prize pools in the game's first year as an eSport.
'Fortnite' makes its Android debut this summer
You knew it was just a matter of time. Just weeks after Fortnite launched on iOS, Epic has confirmed that its battle royale title (and really, cultural phenomenon) is coming to Android sometime in the summer. There's not much more to say at this stage, but it's safe to presume iOS' touch-native interface will carry over. And crucially, it should reflect some lessons learned since the mobile game arrived to ruin people's productivity.
'Fortnite' update delivers destruction, new areas and meme emotes
Fortnite Season Four is here, and Epic Games has delivered in a big way. After teasing a spectacular comet crash at the end of the previous season, today's update sees much-loved areas of the map destroyed, new ones added and players bestowed with tonnes of new skins, emotes and in-game items.
'Fortnite' has been down for hours, but don't tell Twitch
Yesterday Epic Games delivered the big 3.5 patch for its popular battle royale game Fortnite, but within hours users started having trouble logging in. Around 6 PM ET yesterday the servers went down for good, and later the team tweeted "We're bringing the servers offline for emergency maintenance. We apologize for this inconvenience. We currently have no ETA on when servers will be back up." The game's status page has been updated several times since then referring to a database problem, but there's still no word when it will be back up. With the outage nearing half a day, anxious gamers worldwide have been itching to get back to the action, not to mention the many people who live stream for others. As of 3 AM ET, the Twitch category for Fortnite showed nearly 50,000 viewers, who were mostly watching archived replays or streamers just hanging out chatting. Record holding streamer Ninja logged out after averaging 80,000 viewers even during the outage. So if you're still up, let us know how you're dealing with the down time. Are you heading back to PUBG, watching old archives or just finding something else to do entirely? Update: After nearly 24 hours, Fortnite is back up, albeit without the new 50v50 mode.
'Fortnite' update adds instant fort-building grenades
As Fortnite continues to pick up new players across various platforms, Epic Games has consistently deployed new updates to keep the game fresh and free from game-breaking bugs. Earlier this week, we saw the team introduce new space-themed skins, complete with NASA-like space shuttle gliders, but we've had to wait until today to see some of the new in-game items. The most notable inclusion is the Port-A-Fort, a new epic drop that will instantly deploy a three-story fort made from metal.
‘Fortnite’ is now available for all iOS users
If you've enviously watched friends playing Fortnite on their iPhones but couldn't snag an invite during its slow public rollout, fret no more: The mobile version of the battle royale game is finally available for each and every iOS user. Unfortunately, there's still no word on when it will be out for Android devices.
With 'Siren,' Unreal Engine blurs the line between CGI and reality
Epic Games has been obsessed with real-time motion capture for years, but the company is now trying to take its experiments with the technology one step further. Enter "Siren," a digital personality that it created alongside a few prominent firms in the gaming industry: Vicon, Cubic Motion, 3Lateral and Tencent (which just became a major investor in Ubisoft). The crazy thing about Siren is that she comes to life using live mocap tech, powered by software from Vicon, that can make her body and finger movements be captured and live-streamed into an Unreal Engine project.
Tim Sweeney wants Unreal to power the cross-platform revolution
It's 2018 and developers are finally taking mobile games seriously -- or it's the other way around, depending on whom you ask. "I think what we are seeing is now these AAA games from traditional PC and console developers going mobile, and they are among the most popular mobile games that exist," Epic Games co-founder Tim Sweeney says. Epic CTO Kim Liberi jumps in and adds, "I think it's almost the other way, I think it's that mobile developers are taking games more seriously."
'Fortnite Battle Royale' is coming to phones and tablets soon
Fortnite has rapidly gained ground on the battle royale-style champ, PUBG, and now Epic Games has announced it will launch a mobile version on iOS and Android. Amazingly, it's supposed to be the same 100-player PvP game we've seen on other platforms, and there's even a promise to support cross-play and cross-progression with the PC and PS4 versions. Unfortunately, the Android version is coming "in the next few months," but sign-ups to play on iOS will open Monday with invites to play rolling out soon after. Minimum compatible iOS devices include iPhone 6S/SE, iPad Mini 4, iPad Pro, iPad Air 2 and iPad 2017 running iOS 11.
Intel is funding the future of large-scale VR environments
If you've donned a VR headset and immersed yourself in a proper virtual reality 'experience,' you might have seen chills, thrills, and...not too many people at once. Today, Intel released a demo showcasing a software solution to the crowd problem the company created with The Glimpse Group. The demo part of the Intel Arena Project, as it's named, situates the viewer in the middle of a big basketball stadium with 2,500 fans in the seats, most of which are individually rendered. Functionally it's a proof-of-concept to show such a population can be rendered in a VR experience, but the collaboration is also publicly releasing the software and process documentation to help creators build their own large-scale virtual reality scenes.
Epic is shuttering ‘Paragon’ following success of 'Fortnite'
Last week, an Epic Games representative explained Paragon's uncertain future on the game's subreddit, which worried fans -- especially as it confirmed that developers had been siphoned off to assist with the massively successful Fortnite. It turns out those apocalyptic concerns were correct: Paragon is getting shut down on April 26th. To make up for it, every player, on all platforms, can apply for a refund.
Epic pins 'Fortnite' server woes on Meltdown patches
The Meltdown vulnerability is bound to have far-reaching effects on the computing industry, but it's having a very tangible effect right now: it's causing chaos for multiplayer gaming. Epic Games has blamed Meltdown patches for login problems and downtime in Fortnite, pointing to the increased processor use at the third-party cloud services the battle royale component of the game needs to run. There may be other "unexpected issues" over the next week as other services are updated, Epic said.
DHS to release an active shooter training simulator for teachers
Last June, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) released a virtual training program for first responders aimed at preparing them for an active shooter incident. Now, there's a program specifically for teachers. "With teachers, they did not self-select into a role where they expect to have bullets flying near them. Unfortunately, it's becoming a reality," Tamara Griffith, one of the chief engineers of the program, told Gizmodo. "And so we want to give them that chance to understand what options are available to them and what might work well for them."
