More people are playing Fortnite competitively now than during the World Cup

Statistics from recent Fortnite events show an increase in players since last year’s World Cup Qualifiers.

A post from @FNCompData has become a big topic of discussion for competitive Fortnite fans on both Twitter and Reddit. They compared the number of players who entered Week 2 of the 2019 World Cup Duos Qualifiers with those who took part in Week 2 of FNCS Duos.

More people competed in FNCS Duos Week 2 than in Week 2 of World Cup Duos Qualifiers. Almost one year later. pic.twitter.com/ofqf60wtki

— Fortnite Competitive Data (@FNCompData) April 2, 2020

The data was also broken down into server regions. This displayed that whilst there was a small increase in players overall, the amount of people competing in both NA-East and NA-West has dropped. The addition of the Middle East server plays a small part in the rise, but with only 3,812 entrants for FNCS Week 2, it isn’t the sole reason.

With everyone so sure that Fortnite is dead, how can this be the case? Well, there are a few factors. Firstly, with a global pandemic keeping us all firmly locked in our gaming chairs, there’s no doubt that more people than ever have time to hop online. Secondly, as casual players become more and more bored with the game, the player base will inevitably shift towards competitive users.

However, the most important distinction to make is the implementation of separate prize pools for console and mobile. Whilst the World Cup Qualifiers were open to players on these platforms, the fact that they had to compete directly against people on PC made it pretty much impossible.

the only thing dead about Fortnite right now is Deadpool lmao

— FaZe Ewok (@Ewok) April 2, 2020

In order to enter either of the events in question, players had to reach Champion Division in Arena. The system has changed since last year, for World Cup, people would camp in Ballers to yoink those placement points, whereas this time around we have Hype Nites to carry us through. The grind may take a bit longer now due to the higher amount of hype required, but I don’t think this will have made much of a difference to the overall number of competitors.

So, whilst these figures don’t realistically indicate that competitive Fortnite is growing, they are definitely a sign that things aren’t as bad as they are made out to be. It also proves that although top tier pros may not be happy with the even prize split, the separation of console from PC for competition is working as intended. It will be interesting to see how Epic continue to evolve the format of events over the coming seasons to keep these numbers as high as possible.