Fair warning: datamined documents are sometimes reliable indicators of what is coming into a match, like if we get to observe that the Fortnite challenges a few days earlier or when the skins turn it into the match week or so before they actually hit the shop. When there's a full size skin from the game, for instance, you can bet it is actually coming. Occasionally datamined files are less reliable, and we are talking about the latter now. Recent sleuthing has uncovered a new folder attached to the restricted time modes with "comp" in the title, and several are taking this to mean that Fortnite: Battle Royale is becoming a competitive mode. It's not the craziest idea.

Let us think about why Fortnite could use a competitive manner, to begin with. For one thing, it has a ridiculously large skill cap -- which usually means that the best of the best players may wipe the floor with folks like myself. That's mostly due to the simple fact that high-level players are able to easily juggle the building and shooting mechanisms into a new type of level-editing shooter which hasn't been seen before. Lower-skilled players are largely playing a normal shooter with the capability to construct ramps. Right now Fortnite has no skill-based matchmaking, which is part of the pleasure: that John Wick on the horizon may be a fool with a lot of free time and/or disposable income, also it might be the most dangerous player you've ever met.

Any kind of ranking system would also give a little bit more of an incentive for those players to stick around: someone who's mastered the sport might just move on to greener pastures if there isn't a new structure in which to prove themselves.

It could also begin laying the groundwork for genuine Fortnite esports. Esports with Battle Royale games are a tricky beast because arbitrary action can make things inconsistent, and sports thrive when they're predictable contests that allow player skill carry the day. Fortnite Items is a better candidate than PUBG, at least, since the resource needs of this building system encourage conflict and dissuade camping, and camping isn't a pleasure to watch. Fortnite is the biggest game in the world, but it is far from the biggest game in esports -- it is difficult to imagine that Epic is not thinking about how to build in this direction.