‘Fortnite’ Breaks Playercount Record With Juice WRLD, Ice Spice, Snoop Dogg, Eminem Concert

Update: While Epic didn’t offer API data access until the last few years, in 2021 they tweeted that the Galactus event had 15.3 million playerswhich would put it above this one. The original article follows:

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If you think Fortnite peaked years ago, you’re just wrong, no two ways about it. The game continues to grow and grow and now it has set a new concurrent play record with millions more players than the previous one for the Big Bang event.

Fortnite just held a sprawling virtual concert starring Snoop Dogg, Eminem, Ice Spice and the late Juice WRLD, with the show meant to be a tribute to the late rapper. Lasting about 15 minutes or so, each performed a song or two, ending with Juice WRLD having the stage to themselves as the players floated around in crystal butterfly form.

The previous record for the number of concurrent players for Fortnite was 11.6 million for Big Bang. Now it’s an astonishing 14.3 million, about a 25% increase from the old record.

It is the third concert event of this scale with the Travis Scott and Ariana Grande shows before this. Fortnite has featured a lot of music and musicians over the years, but most are now integrated into the Fortnite Festival rather than a large-scale event like this. Lady Gaga and Billie Eilish, for example, have music and skins in the game, but they haven’t had big showcases like this.

Players were given a free Juice WRLD skin for logging in this week ahead of the show, which might have boosted attendance a bit. This is also the end of chapter 5 and chapter 6 starts tomorrow, a Japanese themed episode which looks amazing so the hype is pretty high among the player base.

In short, we don’t know exactly when Fortnite will really peak. It might not be in the news every other day like it was when it blew up as the biggest battle royale on the planet, but even years later we still see it break records like this every now and then when it does something new and massive.

As for the show itself, it was a lot of fun with the typical “larger than life” performances with Snoop Dogg rapping around a mansion and in space, Eminem fighting a mecha version of himself and Ice Spice rapping over a city skyline. Juice WRLD’s was the most subdued, rapping on the horizon and in the stars in an almost Mufasa-esque look, reflecting how he’s been positioned on the map prior to this. It was truly something to see. And 14 million people did.

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