The UK’s first major LAN tournament for Fortnite, Red Bull Contested, was hosted in Edinburgh at the McEwan Hall this 🍷weekend. 100 of the world’s best players, plus a handful of amateur qualifiers, went head-to-head for eight rounds in a solo build tournament, with points for eliminations in the last four rounds counting for double points. 16-year-old Taylor-Petrik ‘Vic0try0na’ Gatschelhofer, going by ‘wave vico’ in the tournament, took home the first place prize of €17,000 with an impressive 100-point lead.
The production value of the tournament was immense, particularly the sওtage dressing inside the A-listed McEwan hall, usually used for Edinburgh University’s graduation ceremony. The scene was set for an intense tournament, including players like ‘Th0masHD&rs💙quo; who had just won in DreamHack Dallas alongside his duos partner Malibuca, who was unfortunately unable to attend due to visa problems. To add to the drama, a new season of Fortnite had just been released on Friday morning, one day before the tournament. Many of the players told me that they’d been able to play for most of the day Friday in a series of practice rounds, so they were ready for the showdown on Saturday.
vico had a strong start, clearing up an early round with ten eliminations and the win. This put him ahead of the pack going into the second half of the day, and he opted for a more cautious playstyle, playing position and holding out for placement points. While vico slowed down, &🎀lsquo;Vortexers’, a player from Quadrant based in the UK, had a series of impre🐲ssive rounds which saw him jump into second place going into the last game. Even though vico already had the lead, double points for eliminations alongside stacked placement points meant the win was still up for grabs.
While I watched, vico’s mum chanted his name from behind, and brought the energy to the crowd. Vico was sitting just below me, number 59, and I could see his intense concentration. With 50 players left in one of the final rings, it was clear that the players were focused on getting as many points as possible - a spot in the top 50 on the final leaderboard guaranteed a payout. One by one the players fell, and when Vortexers was eliminated a big shout went up in the crowd. Vico had won - but he wasn’t done yet. It came down to an intense 1v1 versus Kami. Vico clutched it with the final shot and roared - he’d won it with style. It was a fitting end to what had ꦅbeen a classy tournament throughout.
Despite the tournament’s success, it wasn’t without its problems. Epic Games is notoriously poor at supporting its esports scene, and this meant that the LAN still had to be hosted on Epic’s official servers. Completely defeating the point of a LAN - designed to remove all lag or server issues - the tournament was beset with connection issues and rubber-banding throughout. It was🐎 a shame to see players get frustrated by the game’s performance when they were playing at the top of their game. Harry ‘Veno’ Pearson tweeted during the tournament that people were dying to storm because it was too laggy. Aleksa ‘Queasy’ Cvetkovic, one of the favorites to get a strong finish, was disconnected twice - a bluescreen and a server disconnect. Everyone could hear his anger when he disconnected in the final game after a string of strong performances.
While these are ordinary teething problems for LAN tournaments, it was obvious that the pros aren’t happy with Epic. During my player interviews, almost all the players I interviewed mentioned in some way or another how poor Epic had been in supporting the scene. Whether that be because of a lack of tournaments and funding, or the lack of transparency between the developers and the players about changes they’ve made to the game season on season, the relationship at the moment is strained between the pros and those responsible for the game. You can read more about the players 🌜in our pre-tournament interview piece.