Fortnite breaks two million peak concurrent players
A big map update is coming later this week, but Epic says there are no plans yet to add a new one.
Playerunknown's Battlegrounds is the big dog in the battle royale fight, but Fortnite is quickly making up ground. Epic Games reported today that the game now has 40 million players, and that its peak concurrent user count recently broke the two million mark.
It's not as easy keeping up with Fortnite's numbers as it is with most other games, because it's not on Steam and so we can't just hit the numbers whenever we feel like it to see how things are going. And there are some caveats that come into play when lining it up against PUBG: Epic doesn't reveal how those numbers break down between the sandbox and battle royale modes, PUBG isn't available on the PS4, and Fortnite is free, which never hurts when it comes to pumping up the player count. But even though it's not an apples-to-apples comparison, it is an undeniably remarkable achievement for a battle royale mode that's been around for less than four months.
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We took an up-close look at the major Fortnite Battle Royale map update that's coming later this week, which will feature the addition of five named locations in the western half of the map including the biggest town in the game so far, and a series of mine shafts designed for close-quarters combat. It's big, which is good because it's also very likely the only map we'll be playing on for quite a while to come—when asked about the possibility of a second map coming to the game, level designer Sidney Rauchberger told us, "We don't have any concrete plans yet, but we're definitely open to the idea."
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Andy has been gaming on PCs from the very beginning, starting as a youngster with text adventures and primitive action games on a cassette-based TRS80. From there he graduated to the glory days of Sierra Online adventures and Microprose sims, ran a local BBS, learned how to build PCs, and developed a longstanding love of RPGs, immersive sims, and shooters. He began writing videogame news in 2007 for The Escapist and somehow managed to avoid getting fired until 2014, when he joined the storied ranks of PC Gamer. He covers all aspects of the industry, from new game announcements and patch notes to legal disputes, Twitch beefs, esports, and Henry Cavill. Lots of Henry Cavill.
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