I tracked every new Fortnite map that hit the NEW row from Aug 31 to Oct 23. (20,000+ maps, hour by hour.)
How a launch goes: → ~40 minutes in NEW → players spike, then leave → 1 in 4 maps lands in a genre row ~2 hours after the spike, when most of the players are already gone → genre rows sort by live players, so it drops out again within hours
Epic's own docs say: "Islands that perform well graduate from the testing pipeline."
So I checked.
I took the new maps that performed well by Epic's own stats: top 25% for playtime, favorites and recommendations, launched with 100+ players, no Sponsored. 167 maps. All of them dead within a week.
Good engagement does help early. New maps in the top 25% for playtime, favorites and recommendations kept their players to day 3 more often. By day 7 that edge is gone.
Discover doesn't graduate new maps. It sorts the ones that already have players. @FNCreate @HaroldAtEpic
There is so much more I can say which makes things even worse.
Then what? They decay. There is nowhere to go.
I checked all 1,396 maps that debuted in NEW Oct 16–19, 9–12 days later:
about half get under 5 players a day
1 in 10 still hits 10 players at once
1 in 100 hits 100
Good metrics don’t save you. I looked at new maps with no Sponsored and no existing audience, 6–12 days in:
D1 20%+ (double the median): half are under 5 players a day. 1 of 184 held 100+.
D1 30%+: 0 of 109 held 100+.
D7 10%+: 0 of 66 held 100+.
20+ min average play time (top 25%): typical peak of 3 players. 3 of 221 held 100+.
Genre rows, For You and collections don’t hold a map either. A friend launched 2 new maps with 22–35 min play time. Their recommendation impressions dropped to near zero in 2–4 days.
Fire retweeted
Then what? They decay. There is nowhere to go.
I checked all 1,396 maps that debuted in NEW Oct 16–19, 9–12 days later:
about half get under 5 players a day
1 in 10 still hits 10 players at once
1 in 100 hits 100
Good metrics don’t save you. I looked at new maps with no Sponsored and no existing audience, 6–12 days in:
D1 20%+ (double the median): half are under 5 players a day. 1 of 184 held 100+.
D1 30%+: 0 of 109 held 100+.
D7 10%+: 0 of 66 held 100+.
20+ min average play time (top 25%): typical peak of 3 players. 3 of 221 held 100+.
Genre rows, For You and collections don’t hold a map either. A friend launched 2 new maps with 22–35 min play time. Their recommendation impressions dropped to near zero in 2–4 days.
And it’s the same everywhere a new map could get seen:
→ Search: since today’s change, the order is just live players
→ Genre rows: sorted by live players. Lose half your players and there’s a ~40% chance you’re out within the hour
→ Recommended, the biggest impression source: follows yesterday’s player count almost 1:1
Every surface ranks by the players you already have. A new map has to bring its own.
Epic suspended my creator account for 2 weeks for "racism" (rule 1.3) 🫠
My crime? An aura colour.
CORRUPT, RAINBOW, GALAXY, MAGMA… Power Effect. The white one was "WHITE Power Effect".
That's it. That's the hate crime.
@FNCreate @alexbaileync @FortniteStatus can a real human look at this?
ALT Grid of 10 aura colours, each named "<colour> Power Effect": Corrupt, Runes, White, Black, Aquatic, Magma, Cotton, Hacker, Rainbow, Galaxy. The white one is stamped BANNED.
The same old release was then rejected a second time for the same text, after the fix. One mistake counted as two strikes. Every appeal was upheld. This is absurd.
A map with 50K players is a 1:1 copy of mine
I know my map isn’t liked in the com, but that doesn’t make it okay to fully steal my work
This isn’t about competition it’s about respect for creators. If people get away with blatant copying, what’s stopping them from doing it again
