Epic Games CEO teases another revolutionary Fortnite update

Thanks to its frequent updates, Fortnite has gone through numerous changes over the past few years. The record-breaking game will turn seven in only a few days, and its most popular mode, Battle Royale, will celebrate another birthday in September. Despite being out for so long, Fortnite has managed to retain the majority of its player base and still has millions of daily players.

Tim Sweeney, Epic Games CEO, recently had an interview with Matthew Ball. Ball is another CEO and a big fan of Metaverse, so he had some interesting questions for the Fortnite boss. During the interview, Sweeney revealed several interesting things about Fortnite, including a revolutionary update that will drastically change the game.

Fortnite could get an update that expands its lobbies to 200 players

Back when Fortnite was launched, Epic Games did not have the technology that is available today. Due to this, the company had to make some sacrifices. One of these sacrifices is a 100-player lobby, which might be expanded soon. In the interview with Matthew Ball, Tim Sweeney teased that Epic may soon bring 200-player lobbies to Fortnite.

“Why is Fortnite: Battle Royale 100 players? Well, because at the time we launched it we couldn’t make 200 players work on a server. Computers in the data center were just too slow,” Sweeney revealed. The company CEO also added that Unreal Engine 5 is similar to the networking model he built for Unreal Engine 1 in 1997.

“So one of the big efforts that we’re making for Unreal Engine 6 is improving the networking model, where we both have servers supporting lots of players, but also the ability to seamlessly move players between servers and to enable all the servers in a data center or in multiple data centers,” Sweeney added.

The end goal is to improve the networking model to easily support millions of concurrent players. In addition to this, another massive Fortnite update could bring “big and seamless” open worlds to both Epic’s modes and UEFN maps. Fortnite’s open-world mode was leaked a while ago, and it appears that the game developer has already begun working on it.

Having 200 players in a Fortnite lobby definitely sounds like an interesting idea. However, it’s important to note that Unreal Engine 6 won’t come out in 2024. Due to this, it’s unlikely that Epic Games will expand the lobby with the release of Fortnite Chapter 6 later this year.