The new Fortnite season-ending event is already breaking records and generating metric tons of hype with its in-game Eminem concert. Over 2.5 million people are watching the event on Twitch because they can’t get into the live servers to see the concert for themselves.
Luckily for fans, they’ll be able to catch the event live anyway, as Fortnite has added two more showings of the concert. The queues to get into Fortnite servers were longer than the concert itself, as fans clamored to see a younger, digitized version of the aging rap legend from Detroit.
Overloading the servers for an in-game concert is nothing new for Fortnite. The game made international headlines with its Travis Scott concert, which drew 27.7 million people into the game for the show. The Big Bang event also teased more additions to the game that will come soon, like a Peter Griffin skin and a very interesting LEGO crossover.
The concert is another proof-of-concept event for Fortnite as a genuine metaverse platform. While other massive companies dumped money into creating bespoke metaverse platforms, Epic Games found the secret sauce: create a platform that people want to actually spend time in, and the fans will come. From there, you can have the social aspects of the metaverse that get people excited about actually spending time online.
Throughout 2022, metaverse hype spenders tried to make being online worse than ever before. People don’t want to buy a digital house for digital access to a celebrity. They want to play games with their friends and create lifelong memories.
As Fortnite concerts continue to succeed in viewership metrics and server overload, you’ll see more and more of them. While they won’t come any time soon by gamers’ standards, the Fortnite platform is proving efficient at connecting gamers with massive names.
