- A Summer Smash competitor posted accusations of Epic’s failure to pay prize money from the Fortnite Summer Smash at the Australian Open event.
- A series of screenshots and collected information from 25 participants suggests large sums of outstanding prize payments are still owed.
- Epic Games responded to the post with an official statement suggesting possible solutions as well as upcoming improvements to its payment tracking processes.
Accusations regarding the payment of prizes from the Fortnite 
Summer Smash at the Australian Open event in January have emerged on Reddit, with Epic Games responding directly to the claims on the online forum.
In a post to the FortNiteBR subreddit on Sunday, User ‘LeftRightGN’ outlined an argument that over $150K AUD ($105K USD) in prize money had been unfulfilled, with the competitive payments support email address either slow to respond or sending confusing replies.
LeftRightGN shared one screenshot of an alleged reply from Epic Games that suggested the tournament “wasn’t organized or sponsored by Epic Games,” in spite of the large scale promotion and media activity associated with Epic around the event.
Epic Games responded with an official reply directly to the Reddit thread, from verified Epic Games staff member “Magyst,” suggesting delays were largely caused by participants supplying incorrect payment details. But the statement also promised to verify that there were no other problems behind the scenes.
“We are also cross-checking our payment system to find if there might be any additional issues that could be causing delays from the Fortnite Summer Smash event at the Australian Open. If we identify any problems, we will follow-up with an email to all participants,” the statement said.
Related Article: Fortnite’s $100M Prize Distribution by the Numbers
An associated Google document posted by LeftRightGN outlines 25 claimed outstanding payments, ranging from $700 to $35K, with over $105K in total.
The document contains notes with the various outstanding prize amounts, indicating that some have since discovered incorrect payment details were indeed the source of the problem. Others still claim that payment details were accurate or that they were simply not receiving timely replies from the competition payments email address in order to resolve the issue.
The Esports Observer contacted Epic Games, who referred back to the company’s official Reddit reply as its only statement regarding the situation.
The Fortnite Summer Smash tournament involved 500 participants, with 200 finalists all earning a minimum of $700. With Fortnite World Cup lead-in tournaments well underway, Epic Games is managing greatly increased levels of prize payment logistics.
Epic itself used the Reddit statement to point to this ongoing prize processing work and their efforts to improve the systems they have in place to manage payments, including a new online tracking system in the works.
“Payments are also still being verified and processed from our Fortnite World Cup lead-up and Online Open tournaments. To help keep track of current payment status, we’ll be releasing a public tracker soon that players can reference, in addition to our regular email updates.”
