‘Fortnite’ Hits Its Highest Playercount In Years With OG Chapter 1 Season Start

Epic clearly wanted something to re-engage player interest in Fortnite, and what they decided on was to…simply time warp back to when interest in the series was highest.

That would be way back in the Chapter 1, original map version of the game, which has now re-launched as an “OG” return to the classic zones, weapons and even the former Fortnite streamers playing the game.

It’s…working. Yesterday, Fortnite peaked at 5.8 million concurrent players, the highest for the game in many, many years, and very much an echo of its glory days. The new season launched with an OG (but not day one) version of the map and a new battle pass that merges new and old skins without needing some sort of IP crossover for once. I’m sure revenue is up too thanks to the resurgence in interest.

This is happening at a tough moment for Epic Games who just laid 830 employees, 16% of the company, blamed in part on Fortnite not being the money-maker it once was (and conveniently ignoring CEO Tim Sweeney’s pet projects like the Epic Games Store and suing Apple). Now, the game may catch a glimpse of that old glory again, but it’s unlikely this is going to be anything more than a fleeting resurgence.

Why? Well, this OG part of the season is only supposed to last a month or so until the storyline of Fortnite keeps marching on into Chapter 5. This is just going to be an introduction for the next season, not a full season spent on the old map, it seems.

Then, I mean, this is only a trick you can really pull once. They had to wait five years for a flashback like this to be relevant, and they’re not going to do it again with the same kind of pull. The game has to be continually interesting as it moves forward, not just looking backward, but that hasn’t happened for a while. Playercounts have increased, but only because there have been moves toward Creative Mode in the game, a part of Fortnite that pays out less than Battle Royale spending, another problem at Epic, according to Sweeney.

There are in fact “good vibes” in Fortnite right now. The old map and gear returning alongside keeping some of the modern QoL changes feels great. I do, however, miss anything approaching interesting weekly challenges, as my glory days of Fortnite is when I could write a guide about where to dance at five “No Dancing” signs and get 800,000 page views for my trouble. That is one place the game has not returned to, certainly (I really do hate the boring challenges now).

Anyway, I do think this will be big for Epic in the short term, but it does feel like a band-aid for a larger, more serious problem with the game. But hey, that’s a tomorrow problem.

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