Fortnite to be Featured in Olympic Esports Series

Credit: IOC/Epic Games

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) and the Singapore National Olympic Council (SNOC) announced Friday that Epic Games’ popular game Fortnite will be part of the Olympic Esports Series 2023, which will host an in-person event at the Olympic Esports Finals in Singapore June 22–25, as part of the Olympic Esports Week.

An International Shooting Sport Federation (ISSF) “Challenge” will use a specially created island within Fortnite Creative to test participants on “target aiming accuracy, just as sport shooters would in competition.” The IOC also said in a release that the “competition will be an invitational event and involve 12 players from the Fortnite Champion Series.”

This new challenge built within Fortnite joins other previously announced titles that are part of the Olympic Esports Series including Tic Tac Bow, WBSC eBaseball: Power Pros, Chess.com, Zwift, Just Dance, Gran Turismo 7, Virtual Regatta, Virtual Taekwondo, and Tennis Clash.

In March, The Esports Advocate detailed how one of the IOC’s/SNOC’s game selections—Tic Tac Bow—had been hacked, allowing players to manipulate their in-game standings on global leaderboards. It appears that the IOC determined that the game was secure enough for competition. The person who figured out that the game could be hacked on the client side told TEA at the time that, while the developers could probably fix some of the problems, he believed that they could do nothing to stop players from using aimbots…

Also in March, TEA detailed how companies tied to the Global Esports Federation and the Singapore National Olympic Council may have had an influence in Tic Tac Bow and Virtual Taekwondo being selected as Olympic Esports Series titles.