New Fortnite ‘Testing Event’ gives possible clues at upcoming ranked playlist [UPDATED]

Epic Games have officially announced that a new in-game tournament-style event has been added to Fortnite Battle Royale.

The new tournament is called “Testing Event” and will feature a competitive format that supports both Solos and Duos. Just as with previous in-game tournaments, players who reach a certain points threshold will be rewarded with a unique pin.

Epic Games representative ‘SyzYn’ posted a message on the FortniteCompetitive sub-Reddit announcing the event and explaining that it will not be available to everyone at the start.

“Not everyone will have access to this initially,” the post reads. “We’ve updated the backend which tournaments run on and want to slowly ramp up the amount of players as we verify that everything is working as expected as we scale up.”

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The developer also revealed that the tournament “will be deleted upon completion,” and that it’s “meant strictly for checking our new systems.”

This seems to be in-line with the leaks that data miners discovered about this new Testing Event, which included an in-game description: “This tournament will self destruct at the conclusion of our testing period. Any scores or pins will be removed after the tournament is complete.”

The leak, which includes a code file and several images, comes courtesy of Lucas7yoshi, a prominent source for Fortnite-related news and leaks. 

While this will be the next major competitive event to take place in Fortnite, its description does make it sound different than the other in-game tournaments that have come before it, such as the Pop-Up Cup.

It would appear that, unlike those other tournaments, this one will be continuously available to play over a longer period of time rather than the 2-3 hour sessions of the Pop-Up Cup, for example. 

The in-game tournaments have been popularly received by Fortnite players, especially the different variations of the Pop-Up Cup.

Some are also interpreting the second sentence to be a major hint that this Testing Event will actually be the first signs of ranked play in Fortnite.

Traditionally in battle royales, most notably H1Z1, players who achieve a certain status during a season of ranked play would lose that standing once the event reset and the next one began.

Combining the theories that this event will be continuous and not in spurts and that all scores and pins will be removed after its over does make it seem a lot like a ranked playlist. 

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Even the name “Testing Event” and the Reddit post suggest that this could be a way for Epic to test out a beta ranked playlist and lay the foundation for an actual one to come sometimes in the future, which would be another explanation for why everyone’s achievements would get wiped out after it’s over.