The game Fortnite has set a massive player record. When the cube exploded on Sunday, 8.3 million people were playing Fortnite simultaneously on all platforms. That’s more than double the previous record.
What a number is that? The 8.3 million is the number of concurrent active players in Fortnite at a specific time. That is the number of “concurrent users.”
Where does this number come from? It comes from an interview with the head of Epic Games Korea, Sung Chul Park, with the Korean site Inven. He gave the interview at the launch of the Korean version of Fortnite.
Fortnite is now launching in Korea after PUBG dropped its copyright infringement lawsuit.
The number of 8.3 million concurrent players in Fortnite has now also been confirmed by Epic to Western media.
The cube event had as many viewers as Austria has inhabitants
That’s why 8.3 million is so enormous: 8.3 million people is approximately the population of Austria. That may not seem so large for a global game like Fortnite, which runs on so many platforms. But the number is huge for a video game.
For comparison:
- Fortnite’s last record was 3.4 million concurrent players in February 2018. Back then, the servers collapsed under the load. There were prolonged outages.
- Before that, PUBG with 3.2 million players in January 2018 was still a massive number.
Clearly, Fortnite has reached new dimensions here.
That’s why so many were watching: The number comes from the big “cube event.” Epic Games announced it long in advance. It was a one-time event that only lasted for a few minutes and required being on-site, in the game.
The Space Cube was present in Fortnite for over two seasons and regularly made headlines. Recently, it unleashed zombie-like creatures on the players of Fortnite.
Did the servers handle it? No, the event was too much for the Fortnite servers. After a cutscene played, Fortnite was still running for a few minutes, but then the game crashed on some platforms.
After the collapse of the Fortnite servers, numbers on Twitch rose to 1.5 million viewers.
Fortnite is currently “big in Korea”
Big launch in Korea: Currently, Epic has focused its attention on South Korea. For the entry into the eSports-crazy country, Epic is coming up with special things:
- There are special challenges for South Koreans
- a dedicated building in the game, a PC internet café, is dedicated to South Korea
- and Hollywood star Chris Pratt (Star Lord from Guardians of the Galaxy) is the brand ambassador
What 8.3 million saw: You can follow the cutscene and the cube event here:
