Epic Games have deleted their post which announced a ban for anyone residing in Russia from being able to compete in cash tournaments. This comes off the back of the ongoing war in Ukraine and is effective starting on March 11.
With the ongoing crisis in Ukraine, Epic Games have made the decision to put Russia on its list of countries ineligible to participate in competitive tournaments with cash prizes, or so it appears.
Shortly after announcing this to the public, the company has deleted their tweet and removed the blog post from their website notifying the pro community of the ban.
Epic Games deletes tweet that bans Russia from competing
In a since-deleted Tweet, Epic Games revealed a ban on Russian-based players that be strictly for tournaments with cash prize rewards.
Originally intended to be effective on March 11, all players in the region of Russia would no longer be allowed to compete in Fortnite tournaments that offer cash rewards.
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However, this doesn’t mean that Fortnite is no longer available in the country. In the removed blog, officials said “Players residing in Russia will still be able to compete in non-cash tournaments and earn in-game cosmetic prizes.” So this means that the regular games modes, along with some competitive tournaments are available for Russia-based players.
If any players in Russia still have unclaimed prizes from previous Fortnite tournaments then they would have until March 22 to collect them, per the blog. They said anything that’s still unclaimed will become “frozen until Epic’s payment service provider is able to resume prizing support for players residing in Russia.”
At the time of writing this, it’s unknown why this post was removed. We have reached out to Epic Games for comment and will update you when more information becomes available.