There’s more money in esports than ever before, but even if you’ve got the talent, getting your hands on your slice of that pie is far from easy. Fortunately, Shroud has a suggestion which might make it easier to secure some prize money – just play Fortnite.
Over the weekend, the streamer, who made his name as a professional Counter-Strike: Global Offensive player told fans that while he’s not thinking about making a return to competitive play, Epic’s battle royale would probably be the fastest route to the best battle royale.
During his stream, Shroud said that “I think Fortnite is your best bet for battle royale if you’re trying to come up as a pro because it’s just free money – even if you lose, you win. Not many games are like that, not many games are ‘if you lose, you win’, but Fortnite is one of them, because they don’t know how to make their game and they just have this pile of cash and they’re like ‘play’, so that’s a good one, for sure.”
It seems likely that Shroud is referring to the Fortnite World Cup. The prize pool for the competition, which takes place next week, is $30 million (£24.2 million), with the overall winner taking home a healthy $3 million (£2.4 million) for themselves. Even the players coming in dead last, however, will walk away with $50,000 (£40,320). Shroud’s net worth attests to this success.
Within esports, this isn’t necessarily anything new – teams that drop out of the early stages of League of Legends and Dota 2 tournaments, for example, will still take home a small percentage of the prize pool. There’s so much money attached to Fortnite, however, that individuals can still take home a significant amount of money, even if they come 100th out of 100.
Related: Here are all of the Fortnite Fortbyte locations
It’s worth pointing out that in order to earn some of that prize money, you do actually have to be good enough at the game to qualify for the competition – a feat even Ninja couldn’t manage when it came to the Fortnite World Cup. Once you’ve done that, you should be laughing all the way to the back – according to Shroud, at least.