Move over, Warzone.
A record number of players jumped into Fortnite upon the return of the battle royale’s original map, according to Virgin Media O2.
The unprecedented player count broke Virgin Media O2’s record for its busiest ever day on its broadband network on 3rd November 2023.
From Virgin’s perspective, this was a 10 per cent rise to 154,000 Terabytes over the previous record surge of 140,000 Terabytes on 16th April 2023.
Fans revelled in the map’s comeback in their droves, with Epic subsequently revealing that over 44 million players jumped into the game on the day of its update, alongside 102 million hours of play taking place.
“Way to start things off with a big bang! We’re blown away by the response to FortniteOG.
“Yesterday was the biggest day in Fortnite’s history with over 44.7 MILLION players jumping in and 102 MILLION hours of play,” wrote Epic (via X, formerly Twitter).
Fortnite was first released back in 2017, with unofficial Fortnite stats tracker Fortnite.gg stating that it reached 6.2 million concurrent players on 4th November 2023.
“We’ve seen over the years that gaming and its frequent and chunky updates cause record data usage on our network,” said Virgin Media O2 network strategy and engineering director Paul Kells.
“This has often coincided with a Call of Duty or Warzone update, so it’s interesting to see that our customers and fans of Fortnite have all jumped back online in such large numbers.”
Way to start things off with a big bang 💥
— Fortnite (@FortniteGame) November 5, 2023
We're blown away by the response to #FortniteOG. Yesterday was the biggest day in Fortnite’s history with over 44.7 MILLION players jumping in and 102 MILLION hours of play.
To all Fortnite players, OG and new, THANK YOU!
Speculation is now mounting as to whether Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 will challenge Fortnite’s crown with its upcoming launch, happening on 10th November 2023.
The rumoured file size of the new CoD is 234GB, which is ironic considering fans and critics have lambasted the campaign’s size in recent days.
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Before the return of the original map, Fortnite held its latest Fortnitemares event, with lots of familiar faces from the world of pop culture appearing.
Most notably, Jack Skellington from Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas showed up as a new unlockable skin, along with Alan Wake receiving his own map to celebrate the launch of Alan Wake 2.
Fortnite is currently on Chapter 4: Season OG, but this new development will surely have ramifications that will affect future updates.
Will Fortnite return to its newer maps that have engaged long-term players or revert back to the original map that has seen a large increase in newcomers and returning players?
For now, the battle royale is set to introduce Eleven from Stranger Things for a limited time period, so don’t miss out!
Fortnite is available across PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch and PC.
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