Fortnite smashes player records as it returns to original map
UPDATE: 44m players join for the game's biggest day ever.
UPDATE 6/11/23: The launch of Fortnite OG, featuring the game's original map, has been an enormous success for Epic Games' six-year-old battle royale.
Last Saturday saw the game beat its best-ever player count - higher even than the game's original black hole event, Travis Scott concert, or anything else to have happened over the years.
"Yesterday was the biggest day in Fortnite's history with over 44.7 million players jumping in and 102 million hours of play," Epic Games revealed in a post on X, formerly Twitter. "To all Fortnite players, OG and new, THANK YOU!"
Here in the UK, internet provider Virgin Media O2 said that the return of Fortnite's original map had sparked its busiest ever day on its broadband network, beating spikes seen around previous game launches, such as the launch of Call of Duty: Warzone.
ORIGINAL STORY 5/11/23: Fortnite broke its own concurrent player record over the weekend, hitting an astonishing 6,172,463 users yesterday (Saturday, 4th November).
As tracked by Fortnite.gg, the return of Fortnite's original map – dubbed Fortnite OG by developer Epic – has seen an influx of players, with the battle royale mode itself also breaking records when it hit a new high of 3,109,888 simultaneous players yesterday, too.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, then, Epic has had to keep a close eye on server health and capacity, warning players that they may "experience a short queue" before logging in at peak times.
"We’re continuing to monitor server health and capacity following the launch of the Fortnite OG season, and players may find they experience a short queue before logging in," Epic said in an update posted to social media.
"We appreciate your patience during this exciting time and look forward to you jumping in game."
Fortnite OG launched on Friday, and wrap-ups with a redo of the game's classic black hole event, before fully rebooting the map into an all-new Chapter 5 design before Christmas.
The battle pass is full with character skins that are mash-ups of previous Fortnite favourites, such as Peely the banana man mixed up with ice cream mascot Lil' Whip for a new skin named Lil' Split.
Because of the shortened season length - believed to last only until the start of December - the game's latest battle pass features just 50 levels.