Hi-Rez Studios, in partnership with its production subsidiary Skillshot Media, announced it will officially launch a series of competitive invitational tournaments surrounding its battle royale game – Realm Royale kicking off this week.
Invitational tournaments will be held weekly on Tuesdays and Wednesdays and feature prominent content creators and Master-ranked players. Each week Skillshot will be hunting for new streamers and ranked players to invite who will have the ability to chose their teammate for the duo matches.
Unlike its competitors, the Realm Royale Invitational games will have points awarded, and taken away, based on placements and eliminations in ten games each day. Scoring will be similar to that of golf with players hoping to score the lowest. Each tournament will give out $10,000 in prize money based on the lowest point placement and most eliminations.
Along with the Realm Royale Invitational, Hi-Rez and Skillshot have also partnered with content creator KEEMSTAR to host a series of competitive Realm Royale weekly matches on Thursdays. The format will be virtually the same as the invitational games but will award $100,000 in prize money each week based on point placement.
The announcement states the invitational and the partnership with KEEMSTAR is “merely the first step” in Hi-Rez’s plan for Realm Royale esports this year.
Realm Royale has been in development for quite some time now starting at a separate game mode in the FPS game Paladins. Hi-Rez chose to continue development as a standalone game and launch early access this past June. Realm Royale obviously competes with its cartoon counterpart, Fortnite and has gained popularity lately with content creators as it adds a new element to the battle royale genre.
Esports Insider says: Hi-Rez hosting these invitationals will certainly show if the game is esports ready or not. KEEMSTAR and UMG have had great success with its Friday Fortnite tournaments for quite some time now so it only makes sense to apply the same model. Having a direct partnership with Hi-Rez for the weekly matches brings not only legitimacy to the tournaments but a pretty penny in prize money. This will be virtually the first iteration of Realm Royale esports and we can only hope it will exceed and grow from here.