Lego Fortnite, the new survival sport spinoff of the Fortnite phenomenon that Epic Video games launched on Dec. 7, is off to a flying begin. In accordance to Epic’s official participant monitoring, as recorded by Fortnite.gg, Lego Fortnite peaked at an astonishing 2.45 million concurrent gamers on Saturday.
To place that quantity in context, it’s significantly greater than the all-time excessive for any game on Steam save PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds, which peaked at over 3 million simultaneous gamers in January 2018. It’s greater than twice as many gamers as Steam’s present hottest sport, Counter-Strike 2, had on the identical level on Saturday.
Lego Fortnite is additionally the dominant sport mode inside Fortnite itself proper now. It’s drawing roughly twice as many gamers as the primary Battle Royale mode, and a comparable quantity to the Battle Royale, Zero Construct, and Ranked modes mixed.
Epic launched two different new video games inside Fortnite final week: arcade racer Rocket Racing, and rhythm sport Fortnite Competition. These will not be almost as in style as Lego Fortnite, though their peak participant counts are deep into six figures and would nonetheless be the envy of all however the prime three or 4 video games on Steam.
Collectively, the three new modes — which launched alongside Fortnite’s Chapter 5 and within the wake of its Large Bang occasion on Dec. 2 — signify a new period for Fortnite because it continues its evolution from a massively in style battle royale shooter into a multifaceted, metaverse-style on-line gaming platform.
In an professional piece of stage administration from Epic, this new period was ushered in by the monthlong Fortnite OG retro occasion, which allowed gamers to revisit the unique sport map and pace by a number of seasons from the sport’s first Chapter. OG itself drew document numbers of gamers, whereas Large Bang and the Lego Fortnite launch have enabled Epic to hold the momentum going.
The height quantity of concurrent gamers for all Fortnite modes and maps rolled collectively on Saturday was 7.6 million — beating 6.2 million for OG, and much in extra of the 1-3 million simultaneous gamers Fortnite was drawing earlier in 2023, prior to OG’s launch. (Fortnite’s all-time concurrent gamers document is 12.3 million for the Astronomical occasion in 2020, whereas Large Bang introduced collectively 11.6 million at one time.) For comparability, the entire of Steam had simply over 10.1 million gamers in-game on the identical time on Saturday.
In contrast to Fortnite’s authentic, hasty evolution from a sandbox zombie survival sport into a battle royale shooter, evidently this newest part in its growth was rigorously deliberate upfront. On Saturday, Donald Mustard, who left his publish as Epic’s chief artistic officer in September, posted a sketched imaginative and prescient for Fortnite as a hub that included “PVP,” “cart,” “music”, and “survival” offshoots. The sketch is dated Dec. 13, 2017.
I ‘think’ this is the primary time we kinda drew out our loopy thought. The concept to evolve Fortnite into a ‘Place’. A spot the place you may have all types of totally different company pushed sport and leisure experiences with your folks – all related by your ‘hub’ (your locker,… pic.twitter.com/XX34kVchDs
— Donald Mustard (@DonaldMustard) December 9, 2023
“It was such a HUGE, audacious, vision,” Mustard wrote. “We knew it would take YEARS and SO much work on so many fronts. We (can’t believe how close we were) guessed it would take about 6 years. The plan changed and evolved a million times, but today you are playing the TRUE vision of the dream of FORTNITE.”
It stays to be seen whether or not the popularity of Lego Fortnite shall be sustained — however because it stands, Epic seems to have pulled off one of probably the most notable comebacks in on-line gaming historical past.
