Epic Games celebrates "biggest day in Fortnite’s history" as OG map returns

Fortnite is apparently doing better than ever after adding in its original island once more, with more OG content still to come.

Heidi Nicholas

Published 06 Nov 2023

Epic Games confirms that it's now seen "the biggest day in Fortnite's history" with almost 45 million players diving into the game after its original island was added back.

"Way to start things off with a big bang, we're blown away by the response to #FortniteOG," Epic Games says. "Yesterday was the biggest day in Fortnite’s history with over 44.7 million players jumping in and 102 million hours of play. To all Fortnite players, OG and new, thank you!" This came after the original island was added back to the game.

Fortnite has never been far from the top three in our gameplay charts of popular Xbox games — in fact, last week's chart shows it once more reclaiming first place. It's rare for something to knock Fortnite down a spot; one of the last games to manage this was Starfield, which took the top spot in early September, despite being in early access at the time.

Our latest gameplay chart of popular Xbox games shows a big jump in the number of tracked players for Fortnite since last week. Fortnite was first last week with 236,313 players, and is still in first place this week with 429,613 players; over 193,000 more players than the week before.

Fortnite's Battle Royale has pretty much outshone its Save the World mode, even though Save the World is still the only Fortnite content to have Xbox achievements. Of the over 235,000 Save the World players here on TA, only 333 have completed the achievements list.

Epic Games adds, "throughout 'Fortnite OG,' each major update will bring a different phase of Battle Royale’s past, starting with Chapter 1 Season 5. That means Shopping Carts, ATKs, the Assault Rifle, Pump Shotgun, and more in both Battle Royale and Zero Build!" Season 5 will also see "the return" of what looks to be Tilted Towers, Greasy Grove, and more. Then will come season 6 on November 9 as "darkness rises again," followed by seasons 7 and 8 on Novmber 16, and seasons 9 and 10 on November 23.

Adding back the original island seems to have been a huge hit. It looks as though this OG map will only be around until the beginning of December — until then, it'll be interesting to see whether these frequent additions of nostalgia will keep boosting the game's numbers.

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Written by Heidi Nicholas

Heidi tends to lean towards indie games, RPGs, and open-world games on Xbox, and when not playing Disney Dreamlight Valley, happily installs every new wholesome game that appears on Xbox Game Pass, before diving back into favorites like The Witcher 3. She's looking forward to Age of Mythology Retold, Everwild, Fable, and Avowed on the Xbox horizon. Heidi graduated with an MA in English Literature before joining the TrueAchievements team.