Games giant Epic has said that it isn't going to be holding any in-person tournaments for its battle royale smash hit Fortnite next year.

In a post on its website, the firm said that it wanted to keep people safe and it wasn't sure it would be able to do that next year thanks to the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic.

This follows Epic cancelling the Fortnite World Cup 2020 that was set to take place in July of this year due to the virus.

"Our intent is to eventually hold global in-person tournaments again, but our priority for any such event is the health and safety of our players and staff," Epic wrote.

"With so much still unknown about what is practical and safe, we do not plan to hold in-person events in 2021, including a Fortnite World Cup. We will continue to provide online competitions throughout 2021 with the hopes that physical events, in some form, can return at some point in the future."

Epic did say that the Fortnite Championship Series Invitational will be continuing through 2021, though, and that it is "looking at other avenues for high-level competition 2021."

Fortnite is still attracting huge audiences with its in-game events. Just last week, the game brought in 15.3m concurrent players with its Galactus event.