Fortnite Chapter 7 Season 2, dubbed Showdown, launched on March 19, 2026, and mate, Epic Games has gone all in on making this feel like something special. The headline act? Epic is giving away five Founder's Edition RTX 5080 GPUs each week to players who perform well in-game. That's real hardware worth upwards of $1,300 sitting on the line, week after week.
Here's how it works. Around the Battle Royale island you'll find Rivalry Screens, machines that will allow you to declare another player to be your personal enemy for that match. Defeating a rival will award a special in-game currency for special loot, and the more rivals you beat, the more loot you'll be able to unlock. The RTX 5080 prize is awarded to the top five players every single week, which means multiple chances to win across the event window. That's a decent opportunity if you're willing to grind.
But it's not just hardware driving the season. Daenerys Targaryen, Jon Snow, and the Night King are coming to Fortnite on March 20 as part of Fortnite Chapter 7 Season 2. The Game of Thrones Fortnite collaboration will launch in-game on Friday, March 20, at 8 p.m. ET. The emote shows Jon taking the throne and plays the iconic Game of Thrones theme song, which is a touch of fan service Epic clearly knew would land.
The broader story of Showdown is a conflict between Team Foundation and Team Ice King, with players choosing a side at the start of the season. The team that defeats the most rivals over the course of the season will earn a bonus style for the winning character for all battle pass owners. Season 2 offers an all-new battle pass featuring Bugs Bunny and Dwayne "The Foundation" Johnson, keeping the cosmetic carousel spinning.
Yet here's where the timing feels off. Epic Games has confirmed a significant adjustment to Fortnite's in-game currency, V-Bucks, effective March 19, 2026. The changes reduce the amount of V-Bucks players receive for the same real-money prices across major packs, effectively increasing costs for cosmetics, Battle Passes, and other items. Before, gamers would pay $8.99 for 1,000 V-Bucks, but they will now only receive 800 V-Bucks for $8.99. That's a clean 20 per cent cut to purchasing power.
Epic's reasoning is straightforward. The cost of running Fortnite has gone up a lot and we're raising prices to help pay the bills, the company stated. Epic attributes the Fortnite V-Bucks price increase directly to escalating operational expenses. As the game evolves into a broader ecosystem with modes like LEGO Fortnite, Rocket Racing, Fortnite Festival, and user-generated worlds, running servers, development, and infrastructure has become far more expensive. That's not an implausible argument; running a global live-service game with multiple modes and constant content updates is genuinely expensive.
But the community hasn't seen it that way. The move has sparked widespread player frustration, including boycott calls and Fortnite Crew subscription cancellations. The mathematics don't help Epic's position. Previously, completing the full Battle Pass returned 1,000 V-Bucks, with an additional 500 V-Bucks available through the Bonus Rewards section. That added up to 1,500 V-Bucks total. Now, the Bonus Rewards V-Bucks have been removed entirely, and completing the pass returns exactly 800 V-Bucks. Players who depend on the pass to fund future purchases face a tighter squeeze.
What's interesting is that Epic knows this won't go down quietly. Senior Director of Ecosystem Growth at Epic Games, Andre Balta, addressed fan reactions on X. "Seeing comments like 'the Item Shop is the main focus instead of the game' hits me really hard. It's not the impression we want to give nor how we focus our efforts. We put a ton of work and care into Fortnite's gameplay and this focus is only growing". That's a defensive swing, though it acknowledges the optics problem.
Whether Epic's promised "amazing things" – potentially transformative features, events, or expansions – win back trust remains to be seen. For now, Showdown offers a compelling competitive structure and real prizes, but it launches into a community that's just watched its purchasing power shrink. Look, the game's fundamentals haven't changed. The Rivalry system is a smart addition, and locking actual hardware as weekly prizes creates real stakes. This is just one of the many collabs Epic Games has planned in Season 2, so content pipelines should stay full. But Epic's timing feels clumsy, rolling out generous incentives one day after cutting what players can afford to spend. Building trust means more than what you give away; it's also about not taking away just before you ask players to care.