Epic Games is reviving its in-game Fortnite concert series with a virtual performance by electronic artist Kaskade over the course of the March 26th weekend. The concert will take place inside Fortnite’s Party Royale game mode, and it will also feature tie-ins with Rocket League’s upcoming season, as the popular competitive car soccer game is developed by Epic-owned studio Psyonix.
There’s a lot of, shall we say, corporate synergy going on here. Psyonix has a longstanding partnership with electronic music label Monstercat to bring leading producers of house, bass, and other genres into Rocket League’s in-game soundtrack. And Kaskade just last fall released his Monstercat debut, an EP called Reset.
Now, Kaskade will be performing Reset in its entirety within Fortnite, while his performance will be followed up by the debut of the Rocket League season’s new trailer. The producer and DJ will also apparently “drive Rocket League cars” around to various in-game stages and “arrive at the new Neon Fields for a festival-style performance.” Oh yeah, and the concert can also be viewed with friends from the social video app Houseparty, another of Epic’s acquisitions from the last few years.
Fortnite’s concert series, which started in 2019 with a record-breaking in-game performance by electronic artist Marshmello, became a surprising hit during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic as a way to experience the kind of live events that all but disappeared last year. Travis Scott’s Fortnite performance last April attracted more than 12 million people, and the company’s Party Royale mode it launched around the same time has become an avenue for all sorts of in-game events and the kinds of cross-cultural spectacles that have transformed Fortnite into a kind of hybrid media destination.
Epic has since expanded the technology setup that makes these live events possible with a new studio space in Los Angeles, which it began using for a three-week concert series in September. Now, it looks like the developer is ready to get back to hosting boundary-pushing live events with what sounds like a truly transmedia experience covering its many apps, games, and music connections.
The Kaskade concert will run inside Party Royale on March 26th at 8PM ET, and then on March 27th at 9AM ET and 2PM ET. It will be part of the next “Llama-rama” event, where players can earn in-game items and other rewards for playing both Rocket League and Fortnite, starting March 25th and running until April 9th.