Last weekend, the cartoonish battle royale game Fortnite hit 3.4 million concurrent users across all platforms. Before that, Chance the Rapper was begging Epic Games for a Switch port. And this week alone, we’ve gotten two hefty updates from the development team detailing new tweaks, item/weapon additions, and upcoming changes. All this hype and development team communication make it clear: Fortnite is killing it.
The game did buckle under its own popularity early this month, causing some players to experience long wait times, but not only has Epic Games promised to optimize the game’s backend, they also awarded players with some goodies for the outages in the form of gold and battle pass stars. Not bad.
For fans plugging in this week, you’ll get to enjoy a new crossbow, with some Valentine’s Day themed skins and a number of bug fixes, which you can read about here.
Updating players on a once-a-week basis is pretty standard for games of this size, but curiously, Epic also notified users today of even more content in the pipeline. That’s two substantial news blasts in one week. For console users, you can expect Battle Royale to hit 60 FPS later this month, regardless of what system you’re using. Epic is also adding more server locations to help with the strain, which is good news for those of you on the west coast or in Brazil. The team also teased a couple of potential cool new cosmetics:
The team also says that they are looking to spruce up already existing cosmetics, including adding new visual effects and animations.
What else? Epic says it’s looking into adding more items that will change the way you play. Console crafting controls are being improved, and there are a dozen new limited-time modes in the works. Custom matches are being tested. You can now hear an audible difference between when players are above you and when they are below you. Actually, you should be able to get a better sense of where players are coming from, audio-wise, period. This is maybe half of what Epic Games is promising in the full post, which you can read here. It looks like they’re putting the added manpower to good use.
I’m excited to keep playing Fortnite, but mostly, I’m impressed with how much good will the development team is building with its players, even as it experiences some hiccups along the way.