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Fortnite's Free-To-Play Battle Royale Mode Hits 525k Concurrent Users

The tense competitive survival mode also reached 3.7 million daily active users.

Charles Singletary Jr

October 10, 2017 10:25 AM

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The full Fortnite package has brought in over 7 million players since entering early access, but all eyes are on the Battle Royale game mode that has emulated, and agitated the creators of, PUBG. Via Twitter, the Fornite devs shared that Battle Royale is having its own bit of success with 525,000 peak concurrent users and 3.7 million daily active users this past Sunday. This is a surely an exciting moment for Epic games and will be something to monitor as similar types of games continue to spring up.

Fortnite BR Sunday Update: 525K PCU and 3.7M DAU (NA, EU, OCE)! Thanks everyone!

— Fortnite (@FortniteGame) October 9, 2017

Battle Royale started out as a surprise game mode for owners of the base Fortnite game before going free-to-play for everyone a few weeks after being revealed. 525k players is quite a milestone for the development team and the game is certainly fun to play but, if one was to compare it to the success of PUBG, one would have to remember PUBG is only available on PC right now. Fortnite is available on PC, Xbox One, and PS4, which is one of the biggest legs up over competition Epic has with Battle Royale as more of these types of games will definitely be released in the future.

On its own merits, Battle Royale brings an additional level of strategy to the game mode's formula by incorporating the construction gameplay of the base game. This presents players with unique ways to move around the map and even ways to defend one's self more efficiently by building walls of varying materials. With that, you're not going to just be looking for weapons to take on the other 99 players in the battle zone. You're going to have to find traps and building materials to give yourself a better chance of surviving. If you decide to attempt Duos or Squad gameplay, communication will be key and voice-chat is something the developers are working on.

The Battle Royale dev team recently revealed that they were having success banning thousands of cheaters in their game mode and that cheaters would be the "highest priority". This approach to cheating will have to be fluid and consistent in the coming months, especially with the community growing at a rapid pace.

PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds is nearing 2 million concurrent players on Steam, which is no feat to take lightly, and PUBG Corp is running into issues of their own due to rapid growth. It's exciting to see both games have great success, but we can only hope for a smooth development process for both as they rocket toward the end of Early Access.

Charles Singletary Jr

News Editor

Charles Singletary Jr keeps the updates flowing as the News Editor, breaking stories while investigating the biggest topics in gaming and technology. He's pretty active on Twitter, so feel free to reach out to him @The_CSJR. Got a hot tip? Email him at Charles.Singletary@Shacknews.com.