epic games / dexertoFortnite OG just hit its lowest point yet. The once-thriving mode has dropped to just 16 players worldwide for a particular mode, with overall player count figures for OG halving in March.
Fortnite OG was a juggernaut when it launched permanently on December 6, 2024. It followed the wildly successful temporary OG season in November 2023, which shattered records with 44.7 million players in one day.
Nostalgia was the selling point. We rushed back to Tilted Towers, Pleasant Park, and Greasy Grove. The numbers backed it up. Within two hours of launch, 1.1 million players jumped in. It rotated through Chapter 1’s 10 seasons monthly.
As of March 24, 2025, the mode tells a different story – and it’s not one of roaring success.
Fortnite OG Ranked hit an all-time-low player count of 16
The hype train derailed just before OG Season 3 dropped, Fortnite OG Ranked’s player count hit an all-time low: 16 people. Mind you, you need a hundred to fill a match with real people.
DexertoThough the number’s gone up now, at the time of writing it’s the 51st most popular mode in the whole game, beaten by several Creative maps not to mention official Epic Games modes.
It’s hard to attribute why the player count has hit such an all time low to a single issue. Chances are, it’s not just nostalgia fatigue, it’s also bots in regular OG and a slight map overlap with Reload.
Players had been complaining about bot-riddled lobbies in regular Fortnite OG for months. Data miner AllyJax highlighted this, revealing that some matches had up to 90 bots.
Epic issued a hotfix shortly after, cutting bot numbers in half. Despite the update, a bug in January 2025 brought the bot count back up to 90.
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DexertoNon-ranked Fortnite OG hasn’t declined as drastically, but its player count is a far cry from launch day.
On December 6, over one million players checked out Fortnite OG. However, according to player number data from Fortnite.gg, those numbers have significantly dropped since then.
On March 23, the 24-hour peak for Fortnite OG was 82,212 players. From February to March, the mode’s average player count dropped by more than half, decreasing by 53.8% in the lead-up to Season 3.
The Remix season and temporary OG mode were effective due to their limited availability, with nostalgia often having a greater impact in moderation. The permanent OG mode removed the FOMO, and the presence of bot-filled lobbies may have led to decreased player engagement.
Players had their theories as well. “I feel that the OG Mode is a bit of a failure and although the OG season and Remix were a great success, I think it was because of blinded nostalgia and because they were brief ,” one player shared in response to the Ranked variant having 16 players at one time.
Another complained, “It’s so fun but the lack of players and more bots ruins it we need less modes in Fortnite should go back to creative and br only.”
Fortnite OG Season 3 drops March 25, 2025. It brings back Season 3’s space theme, old weapons like the Guided Missile, and remixed classic skins. We’ll see if it’s enough to revitalize this mode into what it once was.