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(This is the final installment in our four-part exploration of the first two years of Fortnite. Read parts one, two, and three to see the full story.)
Over the last two seasons, the Fortnite 
World Cup has loomed large. But while many players have had eyes firmly on chasing the prize, Epic Games continued to create game-changing items and weapons to keep things fresh, as well as major map changes to keep players guessing.
Season 8: A Big Bang
The rate of change and cultural craziness has been stabilizing in recent months. The game itself is still seeing big map updates, and Season Eight brought in a new theme with pirates, ninjas, and a giant volcano to shake things up again.
New air vents allowed players to quickly relaunch themselves into the air and glide to new locations, while one of the more unique vehicles yet – The Baller, a gyroscopic driveable ball with a grappling system – was also introduced. And more weird stories began to reveal themselves as features appeared in and around the volcano as well as in other areas of the map.
At GDCC 2019, Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney also announced that Fortnite had passed 250M players and was achieving over 10M concurrent players in the game.
In March 2019, the dance lawsuits were withdrawn as the various litigants either backed down or began copyright registration processes to bolster their case. In April, another new lawsuit emerged along the same argument lines, but with a twist.
While the earlier lawsuits were largely considered difficult to win because dances had a legal history of not being covered under copyright laws, the new ‘sax man’ case seemed to carry more weight. The emote included the character playing a saxophone while performing the dance, which opened the potential for the case to be fought on likeness rights instead of dance copyright. That case is ongoing.
Credit: Epic Games
April was also the official beginning of the World Cup qualification process, with ten weeks of online tournaments across both solo and duos to win a place in New York to fight for the $30M prize pool at the end of July. Each weekly tournament had its own $1M prize pool up for grabs too, which saw a lot of attention from pro teams and streamers.
But it has also seen drop-offs as some of the biggest streamers, such as Turner ‘Tfue’ Tenney, qualified for the finals early, giving them less incentive to focus hard on Fortnite until closer to the World Cup itself.
In May, the loop was also closed on last year’s Thanos Avengers tie-in event. This year another Avengers event took place, with deeper gameplay featuring not only Thanos and the Infinity Gauntlet but also a range of Avengers-themed equipment. When Avengers: Endgame was released, Fortnite also appeared in the film in a fun sequence that featured Thor threatening to fly to a toxic player’s house and rip their arms off.
Credit: Epic Games
At the end of April, complaints emerged around the speed of esports payments being made by Epic Games, as well as confusion around the communication process. Epic suggested bank details and other errors were made by players but accepted that the system could be improved and that the company was in the process of upgrading its payment tracking system to make it clearer and more effective.
Epic Games also announced a big acquisition on May 1, buying Rocket League developer Psyonix. Rocket League has been a small but popular esport, well regarded for its potential mainstream crossover appeal being “soccer with cars”, and many have seen the purchase as an opportunity for the game to accelerate its status as a serious esport.
Season 9: The Future Awaits
Season Nine brings us up to today. And literally into the future. The change of season pushed the game into a futuristic version of the island, with big changes to many areas of the map as well as new features like an array of wind tunnels for fast travel.
Commercial tie-ins continued to ramp up, with an official John Wick event to celebrate the release of the third film in mid-May, followed immediately by a Nike Jordan brand tie-in.
At the same time, a major lawsuit was announced between one of the biggest Fortnite esport streamers, Turner ‘Tfue’ Tenney, and his team FaZe Clan. The suit saw Tenney claim that his contract, signed in April 2018 was “grossly oppressive, onerous, and one-sided.” With a slice of the $30M USD World Cup on the line, the stakes were high should Tenney exit the organization ahead of that event.
Credit: Turner “Tfue” Tenney
And just as Fortnite had managed to upend a lot of the status quo in esports conventions, this lawsuit looks set to change the landscape for deals between streamers and esports organizations.
Epic Games made another interesting acquisition in June, buying social video app Houseparty. Epic CEO Tim Sweeney suggested the app and its team would help to build “more fun, shared experiences” than they would alone.
E3 2019 saw the return of the Fortnite Pro-Am event, but while the occasion was an even bigger production than 2018, the viewership stats suggested fan interest wasn’t as big as the first time around. A clash with World Cup qualification matches also made some of the invited pro streamers upset at the potential interruption to their efforts to qualify.
In-game story events continue to dial up the epic scale, with a giant monster ripping itself out from within the Polar Peaks region of the game’s map, and a gargantuan robot slowly being built at the site of the former volcano. A countdown to the weekend before the World Cup led to a “Final Showdown” between the monster and the robot, another live in-game event that caused yet more changes to the map.
With the Fortnite World Cup now upon us, marking the culmination of two years of industry dominating success and the biggest prize purse in esports history, some cracks in the armor have begun to appear.
Stream viewership numbers have continued to be dominated by the biggest streamers, with the official World Cup-related esport streams not stealing the spotlight. Q2 2019 also saw Twitch’s first ever decline in viewership, largely attributed to a decline in Fortnite numbers. Riot Games returned to the top of the quarterly charts, with League of Legends esports along with the arrival of a new auto-battler genre game, Teamfight Tactics, building its audience quickly.
The Fortnite World Cup event will be far more important than a celebration of the success to date and a reward for the elite players’ commitment to the game. It will also need to deliver new promises and new horizons for the game to explore.
