On August 1, the Fortnite Team announced The Rift Tour, a collaboration with pop-star Ariana Grande. The Rift Tour event series includes five in-game shows on August 6, 7, and 8, with three of those shows happening on August 8. Alongside these shows, there will be a series of in-game quests, cosmetic items, and other Rift Tour themed add-ins, including playable character skins based on Ariana Grande’s appearance, umbrellas, loading screens, and the highlight of the event: a pig.
The playable Rift Tour quests to unlock the first series of cosmetics will be available from July 29 until August 8, the day of the final shows of the Rift Tour. Additional rewards will be unlockable for all Fortnite Crew subscribers who log in from August 5 until August 10.
For her part, it seems unlikely that Ariana Grande will be performing in very many, if any, IRL concerts in 2021. In an Instagram post released around the same time as her announcement of The Rift Tour concert series, Grande urged fans to be extremely wary of the Delta Variant of the COVID-19 Virus, follow health protocols, and wear masks in public, and get the vaccine if able.
The in-game concerts themselves are likely to be very similar to past concerts which featured Marshello, and Travis Scott, in which a 3D avatar version of the performer appears in a special in-game lobby while licensed music and pre-recorded audio, including ad-libs and audience banter, play from a set of in-game “speakers.”
