Fortnite player count: How many people are playing OG Fortnite?

Fortnite has exploded in popularity.

Jonesy jumping away from some rockets in Fortnite.
Image via Epic Games

Fortnite’s new update, OG, recently reunited long-time players with a map featuring many familiar locations. Players have been flocking back to Fortnite in droves, so much so that the game’s servers have crashed. It seems Epic has reignited the public’s passion for survival, but how many people are playing OG Fortnite?

Recommended Videos

How many players does OG Fortnite have?

A screenshot of Tilted Towers from the Fortnite OG update.
Familiar locations such as Tilted Towers are back in Fortnite’s new OG update. Image via Epic Games.

Just a couple of hours after the OG update went live, Dot reported that Fortnite had broken its all-time concurrent player count with nearly 4 million players battling it out for a victory royale. At 8:40pm on Nov. 3, however, the player count was even higher at a staggering 5,888,686.

To put that into perspective, Steam’s highest concurrent player was around 3.2 million when Player Unknown’s Battlegrounds was at the peak of its popularity. For comparison, Counter-Strike 2, Steam’s most popular game, had 1,110,103 players during the same timeframe. The two titles often overtake one another in daily popularity, and have both received massive updates recently, though CS2 had a mixed reception.

Even though Fortnite relies on a large number of players to sustain itself, the sudden wave of excited users caused excessive strain on the game’s servers, crashing them for a while. They are back up now, but some players have been reporting wait times of up to 30 minutes during peak hours. 

Some consider Fortnite to be a “dead game” as content creators have not been playing Epic’s battle royale as much in recent years. Yet despite the lack of social content, Fortnite is doing better than ever, and fans are loving the new OG update, technical issues aside.

Author
Image of Kate Robinson
Kate Robinson
Staff Writer. Kate has written about all aspects of the games industry, from the smallest of indie titles to the largest of RPGs. She also has a game design degree obtained from the developers of Sneak King and a unique writing style that is present in all her work.