Fortnite may no longer be able to claim it’s the biggest video game in the world, as interest begins to fall and Minecraft sees a resurgence. EA claim UK Parliament loot boxes are ‘surprise mechanics’ and ‘quite fair’ If there’s two video games every parent, even those that have zero interest in gaming, have heard of it’s Minecraft and Fortnite (with Grand Theft Auto probably in third, even though kids aren’t supposed to play it). Fortnite’s unparalleled success has been due to just a few obvious factors: it’s free, it’s constantly updated, and it’s actually quite good. Everyone plays it but particularly cash-strapped kids, at whom most of the marketing and gaudy costumes are aimed at. But what goes up must go down and at some point Fortnite is inevitably going to see a decline in interest, and that time looks like being round about now. The latest Google search data, as noticed by Forbes, shows that interest in Fortnite has been on a steady decline and Minecraft has seen an unexpected spike – with Minecraft creators Mojang reporting that YouTube views of Minecraft related videos were up 8% last month. Fortnite’s decline is by no means sudden or unexpected but what is surprising is the rise in interest for Minecraft.
It’s probably related to the game’s 10th anniversary celebrations, which have raised its profile, and the annoucement of mobile AR app Minecraft Earth and console-based dungeon crawler Minecraft Dungeons. Although plenty of adults play Fortnite the audience for Minecraft is more predominately children, with most tending to grow out of it in their early teens. The uptick though could show that some are no longer embarrassed by their earlier obsession and are now coming back to the game. Something which Minecraft Earth is likely to encourage even more.
The Fortnite 8.50 Patch Notes are available right now for all players around the world. This long-awaited update comes with the release of the Avengers Endgame crossover event and much more. Without further ado, let’s jump right into the Fortnite 8.50 Patch Notes and see what’s new. For Creative and Save the World, check out the official site.
Fortnite 8.50 Patch Notes
Endgame – Limited Time Mode Join the battle for the Infinity Stones! Fight as Chitauri and Thanos or wield Avengers items in the Endgame LTM.
Limited Time Mode: Endgame
Summary Thanos and his Chitauri invade the Battle Royale island, in search of the six Infinity Stones.
Mode Details
Endgame features a team of heroes fighting to stop Thanos and his Chitauri from claiming all six Infinity Stones.
Both teams respawn when eliminated until the other side completes their objective.
On one side is the Hero team. Heroes respawn when eliminated until the enemy team has found all six Infinity Stones.
Heroes start with a treasure map that leads directly to a Mythic Avengers item.
Other Avengers items can be found in Chests throughout the map.
The goal for the Hero team is to destroy the Chitauri army and defeat Thanos.
Team Thanos is comprised of Chitauri Invaders and Thanos himself.
Chitauri Invaders start with a powerful laser rifle, an anti-structure grenade attack, and a jetpack that lets them briefly leap high into the air.
The first Chitauri to recover an Infinity stone will be transformed into Thanos.
Thanos has a powerful punch, a destructive beam attack, and the ability to jump high into the air and then smash anything in his way when he comes back down.
Each time an Infinity Stone is claimed, Thanos’ abilities grow more powerful and the Chitauri gain health.
Reality Stone (Red) = Heath & Shields doubled (1000->2000)
Soul Stone (Orange) = Siphon activated (grants Thanos shields only)
Mind Stone (Yellow) = Jump height doubled
Space Stone (Blue) = Ground Pound AOE size tripled, damage x6
Time Stone (Green) = Big knockback added to each hit, damage x3
Power Stone (Purple) = Laser damage x6
If Thanos is eliminated from the match, another Chitauri will become him after a short wait (unless Thanos is the last one standing).
If Thanos & the Chitauri find all six Infinity Stones, Heroes will no longer be able to respawn.
The goal for Thanos and his army is to find the stones and then eliminate the remaining heroes.
Weapons + Items
Bug Fixes & Improvements
The Hold to Swap functionality is now confirmed upon releasing the Use button rather than when initially pressing it.
This should help with the issue of accidentally swapping.
If a player is eliminated by fall damage while inside a vehicle, the player that last damaged that vehicle will receive the credit for that elimination.
Re-enabled hit markers to be server-side authoritative instead of client-side.
This will help prevent instances where players see hit markers but no damage.
Players that were Rebooted into Rifts were teleporting into the sky but would not enter skydiving mode.
Vehicles weren’t getting impulsed away from the Reboot Van.
Collision for the Reboot Van was not affecting some vehicles, allowing them to hide inside of the Reboot Van.
The yellow “invulnerability” effect wasn’t appearing on players who were revived by the Reboot Van.
The Reboot Card was still playing its spawn sound even if the player disconnected.
Dropping inventory items while in vehicles with weapons is now blocked to prevent various camera issues.
Traps were occasionally being placed in the middle of a tile rather than against a wall when using Builder Pro.
When exiting vehicles, the equip animation will now always play before weapons can be fired.
This will prevent the issue where players would occasionally see themselves fire right after exiting a vehicle before the server had time to register the shot.
The elimination feed text will no longer display the “eliminated by ally” message if an ally interrupts a player reboot animation.
Fall damage was being taken when using a Jetpack (in supported Limited Time Modes) after being launched from the Pirate Cannon.
Players were not able to negate fall damage using a Flintlock Pistol while crouching.
Players couldn’t see the nameplates of party member’s Reboot Cards in the UI.
Players would not drop a Reboot Card if they were eliminated after confirming a Reboot but before their teammate actually spawned.
Gameplay
Bug Fixes & Improvements
We’ve resolved an issue that was preventing the correct amount of Survival XP from being granted after games and have gifted XP to players as compensation.
You’ll receive this compensation via the Gifting system.
Competitive
New Tournament – April 27 & 28: Fortnite World Cup Online Open Week 3 ($1,000,000 total prize pool!)
Participation in this event requires players to reach Champion League in Arena.
Region Lock is in effect – players may only participate in the qualifier for a single server region each week of the Online Opens. The server region of the first match entered for that weekend’s tournament will be the one the player will be locked into for that entire weekend.
Format:
April 27 – Round One: All Eligible Players.
April 28 – Round Two: Top 3000 Players from Round One.
Streaming Replays – Currently only available on PC & Mac
Added tournament Match History, which can be viewed by selecting a player on the leaderboards.
Replays can be viewed from each match that player has played.
Added the ability to spectate live matches during tournaments by selecting a player on the leaderboards.
Note: Match must have been running for 10 minutes for live replay to be available.
Added the ability to view a specific match by game session ID using the “View Streaming Replay” button in the Replay Browser.
Arena & Tournaments will now record profile stats to Solo/Duo/Squad categories rather than as an LTM.
Bug Fixes & Improvements
Players in Arena were incorrectly seeing themselves demoted to a lower division after losing Hype.
This was strictly a visual issue and all Hype values and division unlocks are once again being displayed correctly.
Tournament posters in-game were incorrectly showing certain events as starting in ‘2 Days’.
Tournament posters and the Arena Panel were not loading properly on mobile devices.
Performance
Bug Fixes & Improvements
Resolved a cause of significant hitching during skydiving. and during late game combat.
Art + Animation
We’ve added a unique animation for petting the dog and other Pets.
Audio
Added Sound Visualizer without Spatialization (panning) of sounds in-game.
By introducing this mode, if you are a hearing-impaired player, then you will now be able to play the game with audio and the visualizer turned on simultaneously!
Drop in and give us your feedback about these changes either in-game or on our social channels to help us continue to make improvements for the future!
Bug Fixes & Improvements
Various gameplay sounds (gunshots, walking, reloading) will no longer retrigger at incorrect/random times.
This was causing “ghost” sounds to be heard when nothing was causing the actual sound effect.
Fixed an issue that would cause certain things to not have looping audio when they should.
Replay
Bug Fixes & Improvements
When healing with foraged Banana or Apples, the full visual effects weren’t playing when viewed in replays.
Mobile
The reactive effects were not working properly for the Marshmello Outfit.
MSAA anti-aliasing enabled on P30 Pro, Mate 20, Mate 20X.
The interact button now has context-sensitive icons.
You can now move while the map is open by providing input on the left side of the screen.
Bug Fixes & Improvements
Made improvements to stability and to resolve some crashes.
Made performance improvements on the iPad Mini 4 and Air 2.
The movement joystick wasn’t appearing on the HUD for certain devices.
Push notifications were not being sent after updates finished downloading.
Blocked players on player’s friend lists were not appearing as ‘Blocked’.
The fire button and right fire-stick would not function after anchoring the Baller grapple with tap to fire.
The right fire-stick was not allowing camera movement while in the Baller.
The Baller grapple was not releasing on the first tap.
Players could get stuck in an infinite fire loop after exiting the Baller while it was anchored with the grapple.
Double tapping was required to detach the Baller’s grapple when using tap to fire.
There were visual issues on the Back Button in the menus.
Voice Chat icons from players set to “sit out” were not appearing.
Ammo boxes weren’t opening.
The Confirm and Cancel buttons in Squad Management were difficult to touch/interact with.
The Option menus were closing the unapplied changes was closing the entire menu instead of just the popup prompt.
Menu icons could be removed from the HUD Layout Tool.
Vehicle boost icons were appearing different between viewing them in a match vs in the HUD Layout Tool screen.
The Score Tracking widget can now be removed from the Mobile HUD
Score Tracking widget can now be removed from Mobile HUD
It was difficult to see character and weapon animations while using the Boom Bow.
The Map widget was setting its anchors inappropriately when moved in the HUD layout tool, making some attached game mode UI push the Map widget off the screen.
You may need to reset the Map widget in the HUD Layout Tool to resolve this issue.
The Fortnite Week 9 Challenges are finally here after last week’s decent challenges and a super awesome patch today. As always, there are a ton of challenges to complete including dancing between three ice sculptures. In this guide for Fortnite Battle Royale, we are going to let you know how to complete this fun and quick challenge.
For starters, as always, the Fortnite Week 9 Challenges are now available. There are seven challenges in total per usual. Three of those challenges for all players but four of them are only for those who own the season eight battle pass, but you might already have that if you did the overtime challenges last season.
But for the purposes of this article, we are going to focus on the dance between three ice sculptures challenge. This is a multi-part challenge but we’re going to focus on the first part. It’s not super hard to do as all you need to do is find the location, dance there, and that’s it. Well, if you do it three times at least.
The location of the three ice sculptures are, thankfully, right by each other so you won’t have to go far to find the right spot to dance. But where are they? Well, as you’d probably expect, they are found in the snowy biome from the start of season seven. They are directly east of Frosty Flights and southwest of Polar Peak.
You can find the three ice statues in a small forest just at the base of the mountain where Polar Peak is. They’re really close to one another so all you need to do is head to the middle of them and do any dance emote and you’re good to go. That concludes the first part of but one of the Fortnite Week 9 Challenges.
It is pretty hard to imagine a world without Fortnite, isn’t it? But it turns out that if former Epic Games director Rod Fergusson had stuck around, the world might have been very different indeed. According to Fergusson, had he still been in charge later than he was, it is possible that Fortnite never would have been completed.
The Former Epic Games Director Would’ve Killed Fortnite
While chatting with Game Informer, Rod Fergusson was none too impressed with Fortnite when it was under development and he was still the Epic Games director. In fact, he actually tried to stop it from moving forward.
Fergusson said the game “would not have passed bar” by his standards. He explained, “Before I left, I tried to cancel Fortnite. When it was Save the World… that was a project that had some challenges. And as the director of production at the time, that game would not have passed my bar for something we should continue to keep going… So when people look at me and say ‘don’t you feel bad [that you left before the game succeeded]?’ I say no, you should feel really good, because that game you love – that worldwide sensation – would not exist had I stayed at Epic.”
It is rare to get such a frank assessment of a short-sighted decision by someone in the industry. It just goes to show that sometimes it can be really hard to tell what the next big thing could be, and what is worth pursuing. It makes you wonder what Epic would have worked on instead had Fergusson successfully cancelled Fortnite.
So given that he was dead wrong about Fortnite, how does Fergusson feel about what the game has achieved since? He does say that he “doesn’t lose sleep” regarding his decision. But he is “supper happy” for the success of the team with the game.
There are signs that Fortnite’s popularity has been waning. Nonetheless, the game holds pretty strong. And some decline is expected, given that Fortnite is no longer the hot new sensation. Want to make sure you don’t miss out on any Fortnite news? Be sure and check our Fortnite news section regularly. While the game has been around for a while now, the creative team over at Epic continues to innovate fresh experiences for the Fortnite player base!
What is the most popular game in the world today? Your automatic answer might be to say “Fortnite.” And Fortnite is hugely popular, making headlines every day. So that is an understandable response. But is it the right one? Maybe not. There is evidence that shows that Fortnite popularity may ultimately not measure up to Minecraft popularity.
Fortnite Popularity May Not Ultimately Keep Up With Minecraft Popularity
There are many ways we could potentially measure “popularity” with regards to video games. We can talk about search queries, streams, players online at once, players online each month, total accounts, and so forth. The very concept of popularity is a pretty vague one.
But to get some perspective on Fortnite and Minecraft popularity, have a look at the fascinating Google trends report below:
The dates for this graph span the timeframe that begins in February of 2010 and runs through June of 2019. You can see that Fortnite popularity has been very high for a very long time in terms of “interest.” That interest looks like it peaked around 2013. While it has declined in recent years, it has ticked up just a bit recently.
Meanwhile, you can see that interest in Fortnite surged briefly when it came out. But it never reached Minecraft levels, and recently dropped below them.
And what about monthly active players on both of these games? This data states that Minecraft had 91 million monthly players as of March 2019. The Fortnite figure is only 78.3 million. That one is not as recent; it is current as of September 2018. Is it the peak figure? I don’t know. But if it is, obviously it still lags behind that of Minecraft.
Regardless of what this all means, it does prove Minecraft has had great staying power. Even though it is no longer as big as it once was, it has held strong over the years. Will Fortnite? We’ll just have to wait and find out as time moves forward and new gaming trends rise and fall. Keep up with all of our Fortnite news.
