Fortnite Battle Royale hits 525k concurrent users

Fortnite's Battle Royale mode is following on the heels of PlayerUnknown's Battelgrounds in popularity as well as premise. The official Fortnite Twitter account today revealed that Sunday saw the game's Battle Royale mode post a peak concurrent user count of 525,000, with 3.7 million daily active users split between North America, Europe, and Oceania.

The numbers offer something closer to an apples-to-apples comparison with PUBG, which according to Steam, posted a peak concurrent player count of more than 1.96 million today. Fortnite's numbers reflect a player base spread between the PC, Xbox, and PlayStation; PUBG is currently available only through Steam's Early Access program, though it is scheduled to launch on Xbox One later this year.

Fortnite's Battle Royale mode and PUBG are competing in the expanding survival shooter genre, but the companies behind them are also business partners. Fortnite developer Epic Games also makes the Unreal Engine, which PUBG studio Bluehole uses for its game. That business relationship was the reason Bluehole gave for publicly calling out Epic over similarities between the two games when it was relatively silent about other entrants into the genre, such as Grand Theft Auto 5's own Battle Royale mode.