Fortnite has returned as the number one game, but will it be able to keep up its exploding player base moving forward?

Fortnite is a game that has been dominating the video game industry for almost six years. Starting in a time with similar battle royale-style games such as Player Unknown BattleGrounds or PUBG, Fortnite seemed to emerge victorious in the battle to become the most popular. There could be a few different reasons for this, but the most likely is because of the unique building and editing options that allow players to place ramps, build walls and more, while also editing them to create a base.

Throughout its six years, the game has achieved many accomplishments, such as having a Fortnite world cup, which had a reward of 3 million dollars, and its most recent– having 44.7 million players in a single day on Nov 4, with the players having a combined 102 million hours played according to gameinformer.com. This is a world record, with no other game even coming close to these numbers.

Although Fortnite has always been a popular game, the reason it has recently jumped to new heights in popularity is because of Epic Games reintroducing a new map for Chapter 4, Season 5 which is very similar to the map from Chapter 1, Season 5 from July 2018. This was a very popular time for the game, and the creators at Epic Games likely wanted to trigger some nostalgia for the players by bringing back this map in the new season.

This was the right move for Fortnite, represented by the astounding number of players they had referenced earlier. With the success of this current season for Fortnite, all eyes are on the popular game to see if it will be able to keep their current player base with its upcoming season and collabs.

Upsetting many of the players who returned for Fortnite Chapter 4, Season 5, the   original map will be removed for the incoming Chapter 5 Season 1. With this new season, the new map will be very different, with most of it being covered in snow because of the wintery theme.

The popular battle royale-style game plans on introducing some new features in its game, while also bringing in collabs with big company names. Epic Games plans on adding a new racing mode that users could select instead of the standard battle royale version and adding attachments to guns obtainable through chests such as scopes or an extended mag.

The main new collaborations that will be introduced in this season include Fox’s famous cartoon series Family Guy, famous rapper Eminem, current music star The Weeknd, and toy giant LEGO. The first three of these collaborations will feature skin collabs from these artists and characters, but the LEGO collaboration features a brand new mode for the game, allowing a completely new style and New Peter Griffin for current skin characters one has in their locker to be converted to a lego version.

The LEGO collaboration will drop on Dec 7 and for now is being kept pretty ominous. We currently know that it will be an open world survival style game, maybe similar to Mojang’s Minecraft. The gamemode will be selected from the main menu instead of battle royale, and players will be able to play as their favorite skin in a lego version.

These new collaborations have brought more and more hype to the new season, with the majority of the player base very excited to see where Fortnite will go from here. This has led most to believe that the famous shooter will never truly ‘die’.

Despite it sometimes being outside of the spotlight in the media, Fortnite’s player base has consistently gone up since its start, demonstrated by the graph on the left. Although, it will likely not hit the same numbers it has been hitting in this current season, it is very unlikely the end of the famous battle royale game is close at all. 

Fortnite is a game that can continuously adapt, attempting to suit all players’ wants through the countless updates it’s had since its start. Fortnite is a game that has evolved from a basic battle royale-style game, to a game featuring maps that allow racing, 1v1 fights, and competitive ranking allowing for large sums of money. As long as it continues to change with the times, Fortnite will never lose enough players to be unpopular.