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Break out the Slurp juice and keep an eye out for firearm-toting bananas. Fortnite is setting new records.
The popular battle royale game, which was originally released just shy of five-and-a-half years ago, had the highest number of players in its history Saturday, with over 44.7 million people dedicating 102 million hours of play into the game. (That’s more than 11,643 years, if you’re curious.)
The surge in new and returning players comes after the publisher’s latest launch of the game took it back to one of its original maps from July 2018. Chapter 1, Season 5 if we’re being precise.
(Fortnite regularly updates its story every 50 to 70 days with new maps and quests to keep the game from going stale. These also often include tie-ins with other companies, such as the Marvel universe. Most recently the game concluded Chapter 4, Season 4.)
The nostalgic trip is going to be an accelerated one. Epic plans to roll out additional past chapters of the game in rapid succession, with Seasons nine and 10 dropping on Nov. 23. From there, the company is expected to move the game forward again with its next chapter.
In addition to bringing back popular maps, the company has brought back many of the in-game items from those seasons as microtransactions, letting players who joined the game in later chapters pick up some of the unique weapons and accessories (ranging from a shopping cart to a jet pack) that early players have had in their collection for years.
At the peak Saturday, there were 6.2 million concurrent players, according to live stats tracker Fortnite.gg. Even with school and work, there were more than 2.7 million players at 10:30 a.m. ET on Monday, roughly twice as many as a week ago at that time.
News of the surge in players comes as Epic’s lawsuit against Google over commissions in its Google Play Store heads to trial this week. Google CEO Sundar Pichai is expected to testify. Epic previously sued Apple in a similar case. A federal judge largely sided with Apple in that legal battle, but left one opening, saying Apple should allow apps to provide links to other payment options. Apple is appealing that part of the ruling to the Supreme Court, as Epic appeals the other parts of the ruling.
