Top Fortnite players will battle for $500,000 in the 'Secret Skirmish'

After saying yesterday that it hoped to bring more stability to Fortnite competitive tournaments in 2019, Epic Games announced today that the first big event of the year will be the Secret Skirmish, a two-day invitational event featuring the top players from each previous Open Fortnite competition doing battle for $500,000 in prize money.

Details are light—it's secret, remember—but the word on the street is that the tourney will run February 14-15, and will be streamed to "official channels." In fact, Epic said that the event will be used to help prep its broadcast team for the upcoming Fortnite World Cup. That's the one with the $100 million prize pool, so you can imagine that Epic wants to get it right.

"You can expect the same high-powered matches as TwitchCon and PAX, but also expect us to explore additional… operations… during the two days of competition," Epic said. More information will be announced sometime between now and the start of the tournament.

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Andy has been gaming on PCs from the very beginning, starting as a youngster with text adventures and primitive action games on a cassette-based TRS80. From there he graduated to the glory days of Sierra Online adventures and Microprose sims, ran a local BBS, learned how to build PCs, and developed a longstanding love of RPGs, immersive sims, and shooters. He began writing videogame news in 2007 for The Escapist and somehow managed to avoid getting fired until 2014, when he joined the storied ranks of PC Gamer. He covers all aspects of the industry, from new game announcements and patch notes to legal disputes, Twitch beefs, esports, and Henry Cavill. Lots of Henry Cavill.