The return of Fortnite's original map brings a record-setting 6M concurrent players to the battle royale island

Fortnite has set a new all-time concurrent player record, with tracker fortnite.gg reporting 6.1 million concurrent players as the game's all-time peak yesterday, November 4 2023. That new total of 6,172,463 people online at once might be chalked up to the Fortnite Chapter 4 release, Fortnite OG, which brings back the original island and weapons, along with some early gadgets, from the heady days of Fortnite's 2018 success. As of press time, Fortnite is holding at just over 5.5 million players.

Fortnite's OG season does clearly hold a lot of positive memories, then. The main mode, Battle Royale, peaked at 3.1 million players yesterday. There were also nearly a million people playing Ranked Battle Royale and Zero Build Battle Royale modes, respectively. So lots of desire for that original, unranked Fortnite experience, but more than a little curiosity for what could have been—the game definitely didn't have a ranked mode back in 2018.

"It's a little funny to think that nostalgia for just five years ago is causing a resurgence in Fortnite's popularity, but I don't think it's unreasonable. Fortnite's audience skews younger, and five years is an eternity for a kid (and a lot of people, kids or not, would say that these particular past five years have felt very long)," said PC Gamer's Tyler Wilde when Fortnite shot to the top of Twitch on Friday.

That success for Fortnite was accompanied by a commensurate bump in viewers for Fortnite's first big personality, streamer Tyler "Ninja" Blevins. Ninja capitalized on the sudden trend by streaming Fortnite OG for over 40 hours in the past few days.

The popularity was enough that the official Fortnite Status account posted a warning to players about the possibility of short queues to log in.

"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," it said.

Contributor

Jon Bolding is a games writer and critic with an extensive background in strategy games. When he's not on his PC, he can be found playing every tabletop game under the sun.

Read more
v-bucks
Fortnite has 58 creators that got paid over $1 million in 2024, and 7 of those made over $10 million
Monster Hunter Wilds
Monster Hunter Wilds claws past Dota 2 and Lost Ark to be Steam's 5th most-played game ever, with a nearly 1.4 million peak player count
Anime characters, bearded men, and a lizard gather around a treehouse
Eight years after arriving on Steam, VRChat just hit a new peak concurrent player count
Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth debuts to the highest peak concurrent users of the series on Steam—except for the MMO, naturally
The Thing in Marvel Rivals
Marvel Rivals starts 2025 by clobberin' the most played charts, hitting over 640,000 players on Steam alone
Gabe Newell in a Valve promotional video, on a yacht.
Steam just cracked 40 million concurrent users for the first time⁠, meaning Valve's user count was bigger than 80% of the countries in the United Nations
Latest in Survival & Crafting
A man examines the implant in his beefy arm
New Ark DLC gets AI-generated trailer so awful that the original developer's washing its hands of the whole thing, and fans are in uproar: 'This is disgusting and you should be ashamed'
Palworld early access
Palworld's Crossplay Update does far more than let you play with console buddies, adding photo mode, a drafting table and 'dimensional Pal Storage'
Three sheep with big guns in Palworld.
It was 'super popular to hate Palworld' after launch, says community manager: 'A lot of companies might crumble under the threats, under the pressure'
Palworld Ancient Civilization Parts - Grizzbolt with a minigun
'It was a very depressing day': Palworld community manager reveals studio's reaction to Nintendo lawsuit
Ark: Lost Colony teaser still.
Ark 2 is still on: The next Ark expansion 'leads into the events of Ark 2,' says Studio Wildcard
Crying laughing emoji with disturbing realistic elements for REPO
REPO's first update will add a new map and a 'duck bucket' so we can finally give that pesky quacker a time out
Latest in News
Gabe Newell in a Valve promotional video, on a yacht.
Marketing guy invents the concept of 'Real Steam' to explain why 'magic' games, AKA good games, end up selling: 'Don't tell Valve'
CHINA - 2025/02/11: In this photo illustration, a Roblox logo is seen displayed on the screen of a smartphone. (Photo Illustration by Sheldon Cooper/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)
'Humans still surpass machines': Roblox has been using a machine learning voice chat moderation system for a year, but in some cases you just can't beat real people
Lucas Pope accepting the Pioneer Award at GDC 2025
Papers, Please creator Lucas Pope says 'it's a tragedy' his 2013 immigration sim now feels so on-the-nose: 'You want your work to be relevant, but at the same time, wow, I really wish it was not that f***ing relevant'
quake champions classic gordon freeman mod
Gordon Freeman joins a retro pandimensional deathmatch in crossover mod Quake Champions Classic
Natarkveld, a horrific amalgamation of Nata and Arkveld, screeches like a creature in Monster Hunter Wilds.
Monster Hunter Wilds player spits in the face of creation, fuses Nata with Arkveld like they're doing a Full Metal Alchemist villain speedrun
An astronaut with helmet doffed looks up at a giant Sugar 1 gaming handheld, floating in space. The rotatable controllers are extended upward, and look like arms.
Sugar 1 is a shape-shifting handheld with two screens and rotatable controllers that make it look like a legally distinct transformable robot