New Fortnite 'Rivalry' includes chance to win RTX 5080 — top five players will be awarded GPU hardware in Chapter 7 Season 2 competition

Yesterday, Epic dropped a new Fortnite season after the previous one ran a mammoth four months. Officially titled "Fortnite: Showdown," it's the second season in the seventh chapter of the game, refreshing the battle royale with a bunch of new stuff. One particular addition that jumped out to us was the fact that Epic is giving away five Founder's Edition RTX 5080 GPUs each week to players who perform well in-game.

The new season has introduced a "rivalry" system where two players can challenge each other in a match. It doesn't matter who initiates the rivalry, but the player who eliminates the other gets a "rivalry win" and earns Victory Credits that can be used for weapon upgrades and such. These rivalry wins stack, improving your "rivalry rank," and are counted in a global leaderboard. The more wins you have, the higher you place.

If you're really good at the game and, for instance, win around ten rivalries in a match, you'll start to advance up the charts quickly. At the end of the week, the top five players in the world with the most rivalry wins will be awarded an RTX 5080. The GPU technically costs $999, but street pricing currently ranges from $1,300–1,400, though that doesn't matter here, as Epic most probably gets them directly from Nvidia.

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While this is a great incentive for players, the move comes at a rather surprising time, when Epic has claimed to be struggling with the costs of running Fortnite. Two weeks ago, the company raised the prices of V-Bucks, giving you less of the in-game currency for the same amount of money. This decision has been universally panned by the community, as you'd expect, because the game has felt only more monetized over time.

For instance, instead of 1,000 V-Bucks for $8.99, you only get 800 now. The Battle Pass used to give 1,500 V-Bucks across all its tiers, but it'll now only award 800, just enough to get the next one. Fortnite Crew, the monthly subscription service that hands out free skins, passes, and 1,000 V-Bucks each month, will also only give you 800 V-Bucks now. This is the price increase of its kind in the game's history.

At this point, if you've been looking for a GPU upgrade, cracking 90s might be better than any deal at a retailer. Not only that, but Epic will also give away 20x PlayStation 5 consoles to the top 20 players on the global leaderboard at the end. That's $399 per device, so $8,000 spent in total. You can view the full list of rewards on the Fortnite: Showdown website.

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