One year and four seasons. That is how long Fortnite has lasted a Chapter 3 that, despite occasional peaks of attention such as that of Dragon Ballcontinues to decline despite maintaining enviable numbers that most free-to-play projects dream of.
next December 3 Epic Games will try to turn the tables with a final event that will mark the end of the last map and, a day later, on December 4, a Chapter 4 who has the difficult challenge ahead of putting the focus back on the game.
The fall of Fortnite in numbers
It is always difficult to look at numbers that, with Epic Games clinging to the number of registered users, officially always go up. But the truth is that care about Fortnite
Although the arrival of Dragon Ball marked the only big growth of the year with almost two and a half million players, Fortnite It came from a bleeding of more than four and a half million in June and almost nine and a half million in July. After the flood, the user figures they have continued to drop in subsequent months with an average of two and a half million fewer players per month.
That of the more than 350 million registered players in Fortnite only peaks of about 25 million concurrent players come together gives a good account of the difference compared to times such as May 2021, where coinciding with the arrival of Star Wars
Another good thermometer of the situation is Twitch, where the average viewers it reached peaks of 205,000 per month in 2018, 144,000 in 2019, 165,000 in 2020, 160,000 in 2021 and just 99,000 in the best month of 2022. For the last two months before the change of chapter and map, the figures have remained in a average of 42,000 viewers compared to the 95,000 with which the year began.
An exhaustion difficult to avoid
Despite the staggering numbers, it is clear that Epic Games is aware of the problem and has accelerated the change to try to reverse it. The map twist that brought the new setting to life in late 2021 has been unable to keep up with previous maps, especially the first and the 10 seasons it was active.
It cannot be said that in Epic they have remained idly at the playable level. There are still new things season after season and changes such as playing without worrying about buildings managed to breathe a little life and fresh air into an idea that was starting to get stuck.
However the meme has eaten Fortnite and, increasingly, it seems to depend on external collaborations such as the aforementioned Son Goku and company to attract attention. A strategy that, despite being successful, begins to have increasingly shorter legs as it burns mainstream cartridges like those of Marvel y Star Wars.
It will be curious to see to what extent they can turn the situation around and what strategy they follow to do so. The first litmus test with the future of Fortnite they have it with the end of season event of the day December 3 and, of course, the renewal of the stage and ideas that arrive the next day.
