Fortnite’s season 5 debut broke internet traffic records in the US

In case you hadn't noticed, this game is a pretty big deal.

Image via Epic Games

Fortnite’s fifth season kicked off with a bang last Thursday. On top of all the hype and anticipated changes, its popularity also broke internet traffic records.

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Akamai Technologies is a cloud service provider for media and software delivery based in Cambridge Massachusetts. A recent blog post revealed that Fortnite produced some incredible numbers last week when season five went live.

“Akamai Technologies set a new record on Thursday, July 12, 2018, for the peak level of traffic delivered for a single video game on its network, at more than 37 Tbps peak across all platforms,” Nelson Rodriguez, Global Director of Media Industry Strategy at Akamai said. “This massive influx of traffic was driven by the launch of Epic Games’ cultural phenomenon: Fortnite, which launched its Season 5 on Thursday.”

Season five went live in the early morning hours of July 12. It brought with it a new Battle Pass chock full of unlockable cosmetics, as well as big-time changes to the map, and a new vehicle called the All-Terrain Kart.

“To put this into perspective, this level of traffic would be like downloading the average mobile game 2.8 million times per minute,” Rodriguez said. “This demonstrates both the continued success of Epic Games’ hit title, and the power and resiliency of the Akamai Intelligent Platform.”

Fortnite’s popularity truly knows no bounds and has shown no signs of slowing down. Most recently, Epic Games revealed at E3 2018 that Fortnite had surpassed a whopping 125 million players across all platforms.

H/T Dexerto

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Scott Duwe
Senior Staff Writer & Call of Duty lead. Professional writer for over 10 years. Lover of all things Marvel, Destiny 2, Metal Gear, Final Fantasy, Resident Evil, and more. Previous bylines include PC Gamer, Red Bull Esports, Fanbyte, and Esports Nation. DogDad to corgis Yogi and Mickey, sports fan (NY Yankees, NY Jets, NY Rangers, NY Knicks), Paramore fanatic, cardio enthusiast.