Fortnite now shows how many people are playing and the numbers are impressive

A new option in Fortnite that allows you to choose between modes created by Epic Games like Battle Royale or experiences from non-Epic creators now shows how many players are currently participating in a given experience.

The change was officially rolled out on Wednesday and could be an important tool for creators to benchmark their work against Epic’s official modes.

You can view the player count in the Discover tab of the game, which represents the overall number of players in the match at any given time. Based on the image below, it’s overwhelmingly clear that Epic’s Battle Royale and Zero Build (the no-build Battle Royale introduced last year) are far more popular than any experience created by non-Epic creators.

Just before I published this story, Battle Royale was around 543,005 players and Zero Build was around 368,830 players, but the highest count I could find in a non-Epic experience was around 22,000 players. That experience was by far the exception; The posting in Discover’s “Popular” section had thousands of players, and many elsewhere in the catalog were only three or two digits.

And the vast majority of game time in Epic’s own creations is consumed in the two Battle Royale modes. By my calculations, Battle Royales had just under 600,000 players when I did the count, while the rest of the experiences in the “By Epic” queue had just over 108,000 players. It’s not really a surprise that battle royales are the most popular – Epic tries really hard to keep them up to date, but now we have the numbers to prove it.

We’ve updated Discover to show how many players are currently on an island. Check out where your friends are playing, and see where new friends are playing too!

Note: we’re aware of an issue where the Competitive row doesn’t match the ‘Arena Modes’ correct player count. pic.twitter.com/Fvhz7LEj36

— Fortnite Status (@FortniteStatus) March 29, 2023

Until now, there were no public metrics to determine how many people were playing a creator-created island versus an Epic one, so these numbers will be important as creators try to figure out how they stack up in Epic’s new world. Creator Economy 2.0” for Fortnite. Under the new system, Epic will pay out 40 percent of Fortnite’s net revenue to creators based on commitment to their “islands” (Epic’s word for in-game experiences), but Epic will also receive money from that pool. to cover your game. development costs.