For the first time ever, Fortnite Battle Royale players have the chance to compete with one another for a huge amount of V-Bucks, the game’s virtual currency.
Fortnite Battle Royale often adds new wacky game modes, like 50 vs 50 or the much-memed Thanos game type made in conjunction with Marvel for Avengers: Infinity War.
Unlike those other game modes, however, Solo Showdown will not change the underlying game in any way — there is no extra shield, the storm doesn’t move any faster, and there are no extra weapon sizes or different team sizes.
Instead, Solo Showdown is a way to compete with other Battle Royale players in solo mode to discover who is the true GOAT.
Players must compete in 50 matches to join the leaderboard, and placement in each of those first 50 matches will determine overall ranking.
Prize pools are as follows:
- First Place: 50,000 V-Bucks
- Second Place to Fourth Place: 25,000 V-Bucks
- Fifth Place to Fiftieth Place: 13,500 V-Bucks
- Remaining Players in Top 100: 7,500 V-Bucks
Up until this point, V-Bucks could only be earned in increments of 100 after purchasing the Battle Pass, which lets players complete challenges and rank up to earn various cosmetic rewards and V-Bucks. Earning V-Bucks, rather than purchasing them with real money, has never netted much of a return. You can only earn enough V-Bucks to purchase maybe one mid-range item per season, or you can save them over the course of multiple seasons to purchase a high-end item.
For perspective, the most expensive items on Fortnite Battle Royale often cost around 2,000 V-Bucks, so a player with 50,000 V-Bucks is a rich player indeed.
Fortnite Battle Royale has been free to play since its launch, and its virtual currency represents a major revenue stream for Epic Games . While items purchased in the store offer no competitive advantage, they make the game fun and fresh.
However, the ability to earn these V-Bucks (in this large of a sum) is a welcome change to the current meta.