The final round of qualifiers for the Fortnite Summer Skirmish tournament came to a halt yesterday when two players, ‘Colton’ and ‘The_Real_Cryohme,’ tied in every single category for the 33rd qualifying spot. To resolve this deadlocked tie, Epic Games had to rely on the classic tiebreaker: a coin toss.
Starting back in mid-July, the Fortnite Summer Smash has lead up to last weekend at PAX West, where each day (Friday, Saturday, and Sunday,) the 33 best players would move on to a final event today. Those who qualified for the final event would earn a minimum of $5,000, and the first prize winner today will win $225,000. Yesterday, two players, who go by the handles ‘Colton’ and ‘The_Real_Cryohme, tied for the last slot.
The two competitors perfectly tied over four matches in every possible tiebreaker category (their announcement on Reddit says the tiebreaker goes “Total Points, # Victory Royales, Total # Eliminations, Average Placement, Coin Flip”) and had to rely on a coin flip to see who moved on. ‘The_Real_Cryohme’ managed to win the coin flip, earning $5,000 and a spot in the finals
Epic Games eSports designer Colin ‘SkyzYn’ Fogle explained what happened in greater detail on Reddit:
I’m ultimately the guy responsible on this one. We’ve been using this order for tiebreakers throughout all of Summer Skirmish, across a variety of formats. The order is as follows: Total Points, # Victory Royales, Total # Eliminations, Average Placement, Coin Flip.
We’ve communicated this tiebreaker order repeatedly through both broadcast, Summer Skirmish posts and rulesets, and verbally in briefings to competitors here at the PAX West Summer Skirmish event this weekend. It’s well known what the rules are in the event of a tie.
Both players incredibly managed to tie in all scenarios, all the way down to average placement. This scenario is unprecedented and has not occurred in any week of Summer Skirmish to date.
Colin added that they “…aren’t big fans of having to rely on a coin flip for this” and are exploring alternate tiebreakers.