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NFT holders will get exclusive access to the Friday Fortnite qualifiers and a chance to play against their favorite Twitch and YouTube stars.
Last week, Drama Alert host “Keemstar” announced the return of his popular Friday Fortnite kill race tournament. Now certainly seems the right time for it, Chapter 3 has reignited the Fortnite flame and brought back huge streamers like Ninja and CouRageJD.
Keemstar has since posted a short teaser video with more information, some of which has been met with concern.
Season 3 #FridayFortnite Returns!
— KEEM ?? (@KEEMSTAR) January 16, 2022
Powered by @NFTMTG & @keem_park
Week 1 - Feb 18th - 4pm est! pic.twitter.com/UvIfHMAJxn
Firstly, Week 1 is scheduled for February 18. This date clashes with the Season 1 FNCS Qualifiers, meaning pro players are unlikely to be available. Of course, viewership is the key metric for Friday Fortnite, so most spots would probably have gone to content creators anyway.
What really upset people however was the news that the event is being sponsored by the More Than Gamers NFT. MTG is a project created by “TFG” (formerly The Fortnite Guy) and Team New Age founder “Kirsh”, in which Keemstar recently became a part-owner.
The reason for the backlash is that as part of this collaboration, Friday Fortnite qualifiers will be made exclusively available to More Than Gamers NFT holders. This means genuine fans miss out on the opportunity to take part, unless they purchase an asset currently valued at over $800.
Nothing against NFTs and I completely understand why people are into them. But I’m about to unfollow some people who’s twitters are strictly NFT related. Promoting giveaways and mintings and shit
— TSM FTX Co1azo (@Co1azo) December 6, 2021
NFTs have been a controversial topic in the Fortnite community for the last couple of months. Many pros have been accepting payment to promote them on their social accounts, often spamming followers with multiple low-quality projects per day.
This shouldn’t be a big issue for the success of Friday Fortnite anyway. It has always been a predominantly invite-only competition anyway, so there will likely be very few places up for grabs in the qualifiers.
With Tilted Towers returning in Tuesday’s v19.10 update, we can expect some high kill games when the tournament begins. We may even see familiar faces such as Nickmercs and Aydan come back to reclaim their home.
