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And it’s really tough to tell if that’s a good thing or a bad thing.
By
Phil Owen
on
Epic has spent the past few years trying as hard as it can to will the Fortnite metaverse into being–and now, at the end of 2025, it’s actually starting to look like it’s getting there. Things are still very messy, but Epic’s moves in that direction–which frequently seem to involve trying random things just to see what happens–may have finally borne fruit.
Back at the end of 2023, Fortnite attempted to usher in its metaverse in earnest by launching Fortnite Festival, Rocket Racing, and Lego Fortnite all at once. It didn’t quite work, because all three were half-baked and missing key features. The only way to play Racing was in Ranked, Festival lacked instrument support and still doesn’t have a practice mode, and Lego Fortnite had the feel of a generic early-access survival game wearing Lego clothing.
Two years later, we’ve got a much prettier picture, but not because Epic went all in on those modes. Instead, Epic has simply kept churning out new modes, some of which have done consistently. Likewise, Fortnite Creative has produced its first blockbuster map with any staying power. Thanks to some key legal victories, Fortnite is once again available on mobile devices in most places, which has dramatically increased the game’s potential footprint. And the new cosmetic types added in the past year have proven a lot more popular than the cars and musical instruments that were introduced in Chapter 5.
A lot happened in Fortnite during the past year. To make it all a little easier to digest, let’s go through the biggest developments one by one.
Rise of the Brainrots
The Creative part of Fortnite got its first genuine blockbuster in 2025 with Steal the Brainrot, a licensed clone of one of Roblox’s most popular modes. Steal the Brainrot was an instant success in Fortnite, and it consistently averages enough concurrent players that it can compete with Epic’s battle royale modes. Now, Epic is planning to capitalize on Brainrot’s success by allowing creators using the Unreal Editor for Fortnite to add V-Bucks transactions to their islands, something the Roblox version of the Brainrot game has that Fortnite’s currently does not.
Unfortunately, the success of this mode means Epic has decided to use it as a focus in its marketing for Fortnite as a whole, as well as promoting it generally by placing it in the in-game news feed. That’s proven to be incredibly off-putting for folks who aren’t interested in that mode–which is pretty much everyone who doesn’t already play it.
With the Brainrots apparently here to stay, there’s reason to worry that Fortnite might soon be flooded with this sort of goofy nonsense aimed entirely at children. Epic has already made it unnecessarily difficult for folks who just want to play BR to sift through all the Creative islands and other modes they don’t care about in Fortnite’s messy Discover tab.
The problem is that Fortnite does not offer any way to tailor your Discover tab at all except favoriting modes and maps that you like. You can’t, for example, tell it that you’re not interested in Steal the Brainrot, so there’s no way to escape the noise or pretend it doesn’t exist because Epic is constantly promoting it to you. It’s not fun.
The fracturing of battle royale
Fortnite added several new battle royale spinoff modes in the past year, starting with the permanent OG mode that has been revisiting Chapter 1. In addition to more or less recreating the game as it existed seven years ago, this mode even got its own new battle pass, the OG pass, for each of its seasons.
Then we had Blitz Royale, which arrived during the summer with a focus on mobile players, thanks to its short matches on a small island. Epic has done tons of fine-tuning on Blitz Royale since it launched, trying all sorts of novel mechanics, like granting all players a super-powered medallion to start a match–though since the beginning of November, Blitz is more like a tiny version of standard Battle Royale, without as many gimmicks. But Blitz has changed so frequently that it’s never had a real status quo–which is a great way to keep players’ interest.
Epic followed that up with Delulu, a weekends-only mode with proximity voice chat that allows players to form impromptu teams–and then betray each other if they want to.
Somehow, these new modes–alongside Reload, OG, and regular Battle Royale–have all managed to maintain healthy populations at the same time. They absolutely do cannibalize each other a bit, but not so much that it affects matchmaking in any particular mode for most folks. It’s tough to imagine that Epic could get away with any more new BR modes without a bump to Fortnite’s overall population, but Epic clearly knows this too–that’s probably why Delulu is only available on the weekends.
Going all in on celebs
Being a rhythm game, Fortnite Festival was never going to pull hundreds of thousands of concurrent users over the long term in the way Battle Royale does. These days, the mode has a small but dedicated playerbase, but the cosmetics associated with the mode–skins of pop stars in the item shop and the seasonal music passes