Fortnite has been aiming to be much more than a battle royale game in recent years. Alongside its usual shooter gameplay, Fortnite has extensive creator tools from Epic Games akin to something like Roblox to allow for game creation within Fortnite in the hopes of creating a metaverse of games under the Fortnite umbrella – and the record that Steal The Brainrot just broke proves that point.
The hugely popular Steal The Brainrot is a creative map that’s made by users, not Epic Games, and is severely inspired by the Roblox game of the same name. Despite criticism about its use of alleged AI artwork and gameplay loop, the game just reached one million concurrent players. This is the first time a creative map has ever crossed this milestone figure in Fortnite history. To put into perspective how large that is, at the same time that over 1,000,000 people were playing Steal The Brainrot, there were 120,000 people playing the Battle Royale mode.
The story here may look confusing to some, but to Epic Games they likely consider this a win. With the goal of becoming a metaverse experience for games rather than just a singular game in itself, then it’s actually a good thing if a user-made map outperforms their own battle royale mode. It shows an audience for non-Epic content whilst still using their platform. They have a long way to go before they can reach the Roblox audience of over 24 million concurrent players in one singular game mode however, and the core Fortnite game community have not been too happy with the special attention given to the non-Epic game modes.
The rising player count in user-made content suggests Fortnite might only just be getting started when it comes to expanding its horizons, but it will be a balancing act for Epic Games to keep their core Fortnite fanbase happy too. For more gaming news and Fortnite coverage, keep your eyes on GameObserver.
