Fortnite's 'Solo Showdown' Mode Leaderboard: Who's On Track To Win The Top Prize

Credit: Epic Games

A viable strategy: hiding like a coward.

Fortnite: Battle Royale's first competitive mode is live now, and like the game itself, it's a little bit brutal. Now not only do you have to drop onto a dangerous island and fight off 99 bloodthirsty strangers until you're the only one left standing, now you have to do it 50 times in a row. Solo Showdown is the name for developer Epic Games' first in-game tournament, and it's deceptively simple. You get points depending on how high you place in a given match, and the person with the most points at 10:00 AM on May 21 wins the top prize of 50,000 V-bucks, worth something like $500. That's it -- kills don't matter, only survival.

Checking to see who's in the lead is pretty straightforward: Epic is running a leaderboard on its website, and it looks like its updating it daily. For hourly updates as well as information on which platform different players are using, you can also check out Fortnite Tracker. Here's what we're working with right now:

Credit: Epic Games

Fortnite's Solo Showdown Leaderboard

Right now, Kadenwes has a commanding lead with 3888 points and only 48 matches played. Second place player Jared Ross is in second with 3800, but 50 matches played means they have no chance at catching Kadenwes -- same goes with third place contestant Steel Jim DiGriz at 3740 matches played and 3740 points. These rankings are likely to change, so check back: keep in mind that the perfect score, with 50 first place finishes, would be 5,000. A near-perfect score of 50 2nd place finishes would be 4700, which wouldn't actually be the worst strategy here.

Over at Fortnite Tracker we can see which platforms people are playing on, which provides some more interesting information: Kadenwes and Jared Ross are both on Xbox, with old Steel Jim marking the first PC player to show up on the board. That's not surprising -- it's a higher level of play on PC overall, but that doesn't really matter here because console players will never play against PC players, and so the contest is all about relative skill on an individual platform. I see no mobile players on the leaderboard, but mobile players use Epic accounts so it's possible that we're seeing some of them registered as PC players.

I like the setup with big prizes for the top players -- that's what this is all about, after all. But the vast majority of players have no hope at even catching some consolation prizes against untold millions of competitors. I'd like it if Epic had some small cosmetics available for clearing certain point thresholds regardless of overall standing, giving players like me something to strive for. I got fourth in my first match, but it doesn't feel like much of an accomplishment when I know I'm likely not walking away with any V-Bucks.

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