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Fortnite Hits 8.3 Million (Or 0.1% of Human Population) Concurrent Players (gamasutra.com)

Posted by msmash on from the growing-popularity dept.

Epic Games' Fortnite has reached 8.3 million concurrent players worldwide (or about 0.1 percent of the human population) after finally making its debut in South Korea earlier this month. From a report: Because Internet cafes still play a large role in Asian countries, VG247 reports that players were encouraged to play Fortnite at PC bang cafes to complete special challenges, which were created in order to launch the Battle Royale mode in South Korea. After Fortnite's Battle Royale mode launched in South Korea this week, Epic Games Korea CEO Sung Chul Park stated in an interview that the game now has 8.3 million concurrent players worldwide. A spokesperson from Epic confirmed the numbers to VG247 as well.

48 of 91 comments (clear)

  1. Is Fortnite fun? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I'm an old-school Quake1/2/3, UT2004, player. Honestly once "realistic" games like Counterstrike starting getting popular that's when I stopped playing FPS games because it was just boring. I would probably like Team Fortress-like games (Orange Box) but have been turned off in general on the gaming market for a long time due to the dumbing-down (ie. no physical skill) that consoles have caused.

    What's fun about Fortnite? Would I like it?

    1. Re: Is Fortnite fun? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      It's for kids......and now Asians.

      It's boring.

    2. Re:Is Fortnite fun? by Joce640k · · Score: 3, Insightful

      What's fun about Fortnite?

      Not much. You'll spend more time waiting around and downloading updates than you will playing the game.

      When you play it? Meh. I totally failed to see what the fuss was about.

      Would I like it?

      If UT2004 was the absolute best thing you ever did in your life then you might enjoy it.

      I didn't.

      --
      No sig today...
    3. Re:Is Fortnite fun? by helllllllloooo · · Score: 1

      I played fortnite a few times. It's a lot of walking. It's a lot of guessing. No treasure. No socializing. No Thanks.

    4. Re:Is Fortnite fun? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2

      Well Fortnite got a couple of things right.

      1) Its free and no pay to win.

      2) The game runs in a lot of different hardware: nintendo switch, ps4, xbox, iphone, android and pc

      3) the game is easy to understand and accessible. But it might be difficult to master due to the construction mechanics.

      4) The way they make money is ok. Everyday the put a bunch of new skins for a lot of money. You have a season pass for 10$ that you can recover in game currency and buy the next one or skins.

      5) it attracts kids, parents, teens, seniors... well 8.3 million :)

    5. Re:Is Fortnite fun? by AndyKron · · Score: 1

      You too?

    6. Re: Is Fortnite fun? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      I could either be an emotional stunted adult who enjoys video games or a well rounded adult who goes outside, socializes, and ends up in a broken marriage where I lose half of everything I own. I'll take emotionally stunted for $1000 Alex.

    7. Re:Is Fortnite fun? by UnknownSoldier · · Score: 1

      > What's fun about Fortnite? Would I like it?

      Depends -- there are TWO modes of the game:

      * PvP: Fortnite - Battle Royale (BR)
      * PvE: Fornite - Save the World (STW)

      Both are basically grind-shooters. You kill things over and over ad nauseam to get loot.

      Most people are playing BR with only a few playing STW. Save the World is fun with friends and in early access at the moment -- will eventually go Free-to-Play soonish.

      Noclip has an excellent documentary on PUBG on how BR came about.

      Epic saw the cash cow that BR was and jumped on the bandwagon.

    8. Re:Is Fortnite fun? by JaredOfEuropa · · Score: 1

      It's anything but realistic. Too cartoonish, I think. I tried the other popular Battle Royale game as well: PUBG. That goes too far the other way in terms of realism; for instance not having a threat direction indicator. But Counter Strike is fun and requires some physical skill (reflexes), or you'll end up dead quickly. Not for me, as an old fart I cannot compete except in LAN parties with some other old farts at work. I found a happy medium in the Battlefield series: quick fun rounds with fast respawning so you don't sit around waiting for very long, and a klutz like me can still end up in the middle of the scoreboard or sometimes even on top (after a few drinks). Currently having fun with Battlefield 5, which has the added bonus of experiencing what my old neighborhood looked like before the Germans bombed it all to hell.

      As for the rest of the gaming market, there's a lot of other good stuff out there. I was surprised, after I stopped following the gaming market for ages, my wife started watching some guys streaming games on YouTube, and we tried a few fun titles like Prison Architect, Rimworld, and Oxygen not included.

      --
      If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
    9. Re: Is Fortnite fun? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Found the red pill incel!

    10. Re: Is Fortnite fun? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

      Only thing more childish than an adult playing video games is an adult that gets excited watching a "professional" athlete play sports.

    11. Re:Is Fortnite fun? by gman003 · · Score: 1

      If you're a classic twitch shooter player, it probably wouldn't be fun for you.

      It's much more a positioning-based game than a reaction/aiming game. You can get by with pretty bad aim *if* you're good at being in the most advantageous position at the right time (including building things while moving - top-level Fortnite players move nothing like normal FPS because they'll construct staircases and gangways as they run on them). It's also much slower-paced, with long periods of downtime between combat, and a heavy social aspect (playing as an informal team with friends, not alone, and more for fun than for winning).

      If you're looking for a game along the lines of Quake 3 or UT2004, there's not much of recent vintage that will compete. Quake Champions is basically Q3A with character-specific special abilities, there's an Unreal Tournament "reboot" that's playable but doesn't seem to be in development anymore, and a handful of indie "spiritual successors" like Reflex and Warsow.

      Hero shooters along the lines of Team Fortress 2 or Overwatch *might* be your thing. They're much, much more focused on teamwork and have roles other than "shoot the other guy first", but they have arena shooter-style movement and wide weapon variety. But they're also downright infested with microtransactions, even if you pay for the game itself, and the massive team focus might not be your thing.

      As someone who has tried developing a new arena shooter, there are two problems. First, the genre was pretty close to perfected by the time of Q3A and UT2004. Other than balance and maybe tacking on more and more weapons, there's just not much you can change that's actually an improvement, that doesn't push you into a different genre. Second, like fighting games, it's become quite an elitist, insular genre. Most people currently playing twitch arena shooters have been playing for a decade plus, and they're *good*. Being competitive games, new players come in and immediately get *thrashed* - and then never play any twitch shooter again, because losing 0-50 isn't fun. The established players aren't even a great market because they already have games they've mastered, they aren't looking for new ones, just slight refinements (a lot of modern indie ones even have remakes of the major Quake/Unreal maps, to try to lure those players over).

      (I abandoned mine because the One Big Thing I was trying to do differently turned out to control very, very poorly. Fortunately, I only spent two months prototyping it and trying different control schemes, before abandoning it as unworkable. So before anyone asks, no, there's no public builds of it, and I won't be making any available because a) it was never really in fully-playable state, and b) I might salvage that One Big Thing for a different game in the future.)

    12. Re: Is Fortnite fun? by bn-7bc · · Score: 2

      Not realy, it is a form of entertainment, ok some games are probably childish, bur so are quite a few movies not made esp for children, so to lable a whole category of entertainment as childish might be painting with to broad stroaks.

    13. Re:Is Fortnite fun? by DontBeAMoran · · Score: 1

      Did you try OverWatch?

      --
      #DeleteFacebook
    14. Re: Is Fortnite fun? by Billly+Gates · · Score: 1

      If I had a mod point I would give you one ha. But it's Thanksgiving in the States which means football so that is a tad too sensitive for many :-)

      --
      http://saveie6.com/
    15. Re: Is Fortnite fun? by Billly+Gates · · Score: 1

      I still play wow classic on illegal servers and unreal tournament 1999 on steam lol

      --
      http://saveie6.com/
    16. Re:Is Fortnite fun? by Heir+Of+The+Mess · · Score: 1

      Fornite is a very social game, you discover that you don't really know somebody until you play Fortnite everyday with them on your team. It's a lot of fun if you have good friends to play with. This is a barrier to people on Slashdot, so most of them will find that it isn't fun for them.

      --
      Australian running a company that does C# / C++ / Java / SQL / Python / Mathematica
    17. Re: Is Fortnite fun? by The123king · · Score: 1

      Only thing more childish than bitching about a personal opinion is to post it anonymously on the internet.

      --
      If you gave me a choice between a printer and a giraffe with explosive diarrhoea, i'll get my ladder and my raincoat
    18. Re:Is Fortnite fun? by Joce640k · · Score: 2

      I played fortnite a few times. It's a lot of walking.

      This too.

      You'll spend 50% (or more) of the "game" just running through fields, trying to get to where the action is. When you arrive you'll instantly be shot and become a spectator for the rest of the time.

      Maybe if you've played 1000 games before you'll know the right places to drop in but I had no desire to find out.

      Surely I can't be the only one who doesn't "get" what the fuss is about. Anybody? Bueller...?

      --
      No sig today...
    19. Re: Is Fortnite fun? by mark_reh · · Score: 1

      Then you aren't involuntarily celibate, are you?

    20. Re:Is Fortnite fun? by Binestar · · Score: 1

      Surely I can't be the only one who doesn't "get" what the fuss is about. Anybody? Bueller...?

      I'm not a fortnite fan, but games like this are so much more fun with a group. You drop in duo or quads and build. You have voice chat to keep the long runs entertaining and you have friends able to get you back up if you die. I actually enjoy myself some solo PUBG, couldn't get into fortnite. Of course, I only play a game or 2 of PUBG per week, so I'm not their target market.

      --
      Do you Gentoo!?
    21. Re: Is Fortnite fun? by Binestar · · Score: 1

      I still play wow classic on illegal servers and unreal tournament 1999 on steam lol

      You should check out Project 1999. Everquest as it was back in the day.

      --
      Do you Gentoo!?
    22. Re:Is Fortnite fun? by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

      I'm an old-school Quake1/2/3, UT2004, player. Honestly once "realistic" games like Counterstrike starting getting popular that's when I stopped playing FPS games because it was just boring.

      Did you ever play Tactical Ops for UT? God damn that was great. And it was totally based on realistic ballistics, and one or two hits would kill you, especially given hits to unarmored areas. The rounds were fast enough to stay entertaining.

      I would probably like Team Fortress-like games (Orange Box) but have been turned off in general on the gaming market for a long time due to the dumbing-down (ie. no physical skill) that consoles have caused.

      Most people are still playing FPSes on PCs. Try a few.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
  2. Bread and circusses by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Keep the cluless masses well fed and entertained, and you shall rule the Earth.

    1. Re:Bread and circusses by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      /. have all these "funny", "insightful", "troll" markers. They should add "pretentious".

  3. Proud to be in the 99.9% ! by BitterOak · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Subject line says it.

    --
    If I can be modded down for being a troll, can I be modded up for being an orc, or a balrog?
    1. Re:Proud to be in the 99.9% ! by solios · · Score: 1

      Got onboarded by friends a few months ago; spent a couple of months lovehating the PVE, and it'll probably be uninstalled whenever I need hard drive space. The in-game community is terrible, there are some deep design flaws, and while I was playing PVE continued to get buggier and more aggravating while every patch contained a huge list of fixes and skins for Battle Royale (PVP) with next to nothing for Save the World (PVE). BR got next day fixes for critical issues while key StW class abilities had been broken for weeks when I left.

      The only good thing I can say about BR is you die too quickly to tilt, which is more than I can say for Overwatch. Cosmetics seem to be the big draw, and while I can enjoy that content in some games, in Fortnite they have no attraction for me at all.

    2. Re:Proud to be in the 99.9% ! by Heir+Of+The+Mess · · Score: 2

      Q) How do you spot a non-Fortnite player at a party?

      A) Don't worry they'll tell you.

      --
      Australian running a company that does C# / C++ / Java / SQL / Python / Mathematica
    3. Re:Proud to be in the 99.9% ! by rtb61 · · Score: 1

      You are not the target, minors are and the game is designed around manipulating their juvenile egos in order to buy virtual stuff, to feed those juvenile egos, which will be subject to torment for failure to pay up and keep up with 'teh' cool stuff. For older gamers, yep, boring repetitious game play, for younger players feeding juvenile egos, mummy I need more money and beliefs about what they are manipulated into accepting, the pretend significant accomplishments, reinforced with purposefully fed peer pressure attacks, keep the boredom or repetitious game play away.

      This until it becomes uncool and the beliefs in the illusory rewards collapse. So they scam the kiddies whilst they can and the executives get to breast beat at how good they are at scamming children out of their pocket money, heroes of the digital age, seriously scamming children of their pocket money and those ass hats executives consider themselves economic geniuses, no fucking shame what so ever in the digital ages.

      The real problem with that kind of gaming, is you have to try so hard, put so much effort in to win, that it ceases to be fun and becomes nothing but feeding your ego illusions about success and failure, finish gaming and you are still the loser you started with, even with twitch unless you have the boobies and cleavage to sell twitch streaming.

      --
      Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
    4. Re:Proud to be in the 99.9% ! by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      You're easily pleased.

  4. WTF is Fortnight? by Opportunist · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Ok. I just watched some kind of video that the webpage this game is about sent me to. It looked like some weird anime/furry/brony crossover. The only thing missing was some lube and weirdly shaped dildos.

    And 8.something million people play this?

    Did the freaks take over the circus while I wasn't looking?

    --
    We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
    1. Re:WTF is Fortnight? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      I just watched the same video and I have absolutely no idea what type of game it even is.

    2. Re:WTF is Fortnight? by Type44Q · · Score: 4, Funny

      Did the freaks take over the circus while I wasn't looking?

      I don't know but there've been tornados in Boston, NGO's apparently want to give our kids sex changes and Biff Tannen is president (as predicted... twice).

    3. Re:WTF is Fortnight? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      By asking this you must be well past your mid-life crisis...

    4. Re:WTF is Fortnight? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      It's basically a microtransaction fashion store for virtual items.

    5. Re:WTF is Fortnight? by Opportunist · · Score: 1

      I liked TF2 for a while for its humor and the graphical style but when it became more a game about fashion and wearing the coolest hat to the tutu and your straightjacket, I kinda lost interest.

      Seems this is the same, only that they started with the fashion show before the game had a chance to be good first.

      --
      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
    6. Re:WTF is Fortnight? by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      WTF Is Fortnite?

      An overt declaration that you have been living in such a deep hole that you missed the 10+ articles we've run on Fortnite here on Slashdot in the past 6 months.

    7. Re:WTF is Fortnight? by AmiMoJo · · Score: 2

      It's actually a quite interesting concept once you get past the silly skins and other random crap they sell and which don't really affect the game at all.

      Fortnight is a battle royale shooter game with up to 100 players. Everyone starts on an equal footing with minimal equipment and has to scavenge stuff from the map. They can build stuff too. The play area keeps shrinking to force people together so you don't get ridiculously protracted games where everyone is holed up in forts.

      It's a nice variation on the typical team based online shooters. But also quite silly because selling silly skins are how they make their money.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    8. Re: WTF is Fortnight? by houghi · · Score: 1

      You will be shocked to hear who POTUS is. Just out of a coma and already on /.

      --
      Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
    9. Re: WTF is Fortnight? by Opportunist · · Score: 1

      I heard. And didn't believe it, I honestly asked "How the fuck did he get elected, who was he running against, Cthulhu?"

      And everyone nodded.

      --
      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
  5. Not impressed by PopeRatzo · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Fortnite Hits 8.3 Million (Or 0.1% of Human Population) Concurrent Players

    There are probably over ten times that many players on Pornhub right now, and half of them are searching for "stepmother + kitchen".

    --
    You are welcome on my lawn.
    1. Re:Not impressed by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      > There are probably over ten times that many players on Pornhub right now, and half of them are searching for "stepmother + kitchen".

      If you want an honest comparison, the bots you send out to seek stuff on your behalf don't count.

    2. Re:Not impressed by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      There are probably over ten times that many players on Pornhub right now, and half of them are searching for "stepmother + kitchen".

      I bet you a very small subset of those people are enjoying a multiplayer experience.

  6. Sucks for me by rsilvergun · · Score: 1

    as an old school single player console gamer these mega popular multiplayer games yank players away from the kind of games I like and so there are less of them. You can pretty easily see this with the death of "B" games. You don't really see stuff like Okami, Wild Arms, Jet Moto, Ratchet & Clank, etc. At least not with the level of polish you used to (the indies try, bless their little hearts).

    I suppose there is still a bit of a renaissance for CRPGs right now. Lots of solid dungeon crawlers and Baldur's Gate style games. But if you're a console gamer that grew up on SNES/Genesis/Playstation/Saturn not so much.

    --
    Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
  7. Fortnite was fun... by GrBear · · Score: 2

    Until they started focusing only on Battle Royale mode and left the real "Save The World" game to stagnate.

    I bought into the founders pack back in the day.. now cry when I see what a shit show it's turned into.

    1. Re:Fortnite was fun... by solios · · Score: 1

      Downloading multi-gig patches that contain nothing but BR skins and StW bugs sucks ass when 99.95% of your game time is spent in StW.

      I went back to Guild Wars 2, a game with actively maintained PVE that doesn't get worse with every update (technically speaking; there are those who'd complain about class balance and modifiers but after Fortnite, "the visual effects for my abilities actually draw" and "the community isn't constantly scamming me while waiting for me to do their quests for them" are HUGE plusses).

  8. That's a lot of great reasons! by SuperKendall · · Score: 2

    That sure is a lot of great reasons for not playing Fortnite! Well reasoned and considered.

    My reason for not playing Fortnite is - I absolutely suck at Fortnite. After several evenings here and there trying out some rounds, on both a Mac and a console, I came to the conclusion that I just do not mesh well with Fortnite. I can play a lot of other FPS shooters really well, but just can't do well at Fortnite.

    I guess I could spend months trying to slowly improve, but I came to the conclusion - to what end? Mostly I was not having any fun. I like a lot of things about the game, like the building dynamic, the constantly changing story - heck I even mostly liked being paired with random people in squads as it was kind of amusing to see if we would work together or not.

    Since my progress seemed to be utterly minuscule, I decided my time was better spent on almost anything else, and every now and then I can just watch fun Fortnite videos on YouTube.

    I can totally understand why people play and why it is kind of addictive, so my hat is off to all of you that mesh well with the game and enjoy it.

    --
    "There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
  9. I'm happy for Epic's success by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    I think of them as the "good guys" in game dev and publishing, which is rare considering they are American. Just look at EA and Zenimax etc. to see what I mean. So, best of luck with the franchise, Epic.