Fortnite Devs Originally Tried to Put 200 Players in a Match

Fortnite Battle Royale lobbies could potentially double in size in the future, with Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney insinuating the Fortnite infrastructure that supports the multiplayer game could have the capacity to support such an experience. In an interview with Matthew Ball, Sweeney notes that at the time Fortnite initially released the servers couldn’t facilitate lobbies of this size and dives into how this has impacted the game’s structure and development over the years, but it sounds like the technology is catching up with Epic Games‘ ambitions and their original desires may one day be a reality. 

“It’s going to evolve a lot. And when you look at what’s in Fortnite today, some of it you have to recognize as artifacts of the limitations of the current technology that we’re working within. 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,” Sweeney states during the interview. “Computers in the data center were just too slow. The reason we have Fortnite divided into a huge number of different islands, many built by third-party creators, and some built by Epic, is because we don’t yet have the entire technology stack needed to robustly enable every creator to put their content together into a big, seamless open world if they wanted. And so, a lot of the things you see in there are not the permanent end state of what we see this medium being but are just current crutches that we’re using to hobble by as we work towards the ultimate capabilities of the thing.”

The use of past tense words and phrases, including notable “at the time we launched,” may indicate that Epic Games’ servers have evolved since the game’s release to be able to support 200 player lobbies – although this may not be an ideal scenario. Online, Fortnite players have already began to express concerns over the potential of lobbies of this size in the future – Fortnite is already fairly chaotic on a consistent basis, and doubling lobby size seems like a recipe to a nightmare gaming experience to some players. 

Ultimately, Sweeney’s comments are far from any sort of confirmation that Fortnite lobbies are going to double anytime soon, though it certainly sounds to be an option the developers have considered more than once.