Epic Games announced last month that it will increase the price of V-Bucks in Fortnite, a decision that suggested the game may be underperforming. However, Epic Games appears to have won back the hearts of players through its recently launched Fortnite OG event.
The event which was launched on Friday, November 3, 2023, will run until December 2, 2023. The event promises Epic’s battle royal fans a trip down memory lane. It appears that is what players have secretly yearned for since most have jumped back in.
“Through Fortnite OG, each major update will bring a different phase of Battle Royale’s past, starting with Chapter 1 Season 5,” Epic said. “That means Shopping Carts, ATKs, the Assault Rifle, Pump Shotgun, and more in both Battle Royale and Zero Build!”
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Players have been thrown back to the Chapter 1 island which was first launched in 2017. This will see players battle it out in points of interest like Loot Lake, Greasy Grove, Risky Reels, and Tilted Towers. The reception of the season has been massive.
Fortnite OG event has set a new concurrent player record
The massive reception of the Fortnite OG has been unprecedented and has broken all previous concurrent player counts recorded this year. At the time of writing this post, the event has recorded over 6.1 million concurrent players in a 24-hour period.
The data was obtained through a third-party tracker, Fortnite.GG. This is the highest-recorded concurrent player count since the third-party platform started recording the number of Fortnite player counts back in April.
The previous recorded peak concurrent player count was 2.8 million. That figure was achieved after the launch of Chapter 4: Season 4 in late August. The new event is seen as a way to bring back players who have dropped off.
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In September it was announced that Epic Games laid off around 900 employees. In a leaked email sent to staff of the company, Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeny blamed the decision on the low performance of Fortnite saying, “For a while now, we’ve been spending way more money than we earn”.
“[The game’s] growth is driven primarily by creator content with significant revenue sharing, and this is a lower margin business than we had when Fortnite Battle Royale took off and began funding our expansions,” Sweeney further explained. “Success with the creator ecosystem is a great achievement, but it means a major structural change for our economies.”
Other statistics gleaned from Fortnite.GG
Apart from reporting the total number of concurrent players, Fortnite.GG also has other statistics that will interest fans of the franchise. According to available information at the time of writing this post, the top three most played maps were Battle Royale, Ranked Battle Royale, and Zero Build-Battle Royale.
No fewer than 3.1 million players have concurrently played the Fortnite OG map making it the most played map this month yet. In addition to that, Duos appears to be the most played BR mode with 36% participation. This was followed by Solo with 26% of players. Trios seems to be the least played BR mode, attracting only 18% of players.
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In terms of genre, most players spent their time in practice followed by PvP and Zonewars. Tycoon and Team Deathmatch appear to be the least exciting genres for players, attracting less than 150,000 players.
The big question now is whether the gains that Fortnite OG has recorded will be enough to make the company rescind its earlier layoffs. This year has seen one of the worst number of layoffs in the gaming industry. As of October, it was reported that over 6,100 game workers had lost their jobs.
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