Why Are Fortnite’s Player Numbers Falling So Hard This Season?

Ever since Fortnite started publicly posting player numbers back in 2023, the doomsayers have come out in full force any time there's a decline in concurrent or average player numbers. We're in exactly one of those situations right now, as player counts for the game's main mode, Battle Royale, have fallen significantly since Chapter 7 Season 4 started on August 14. After the summer season saw a big bump in engagement, thanks to some combination of the sprite-focused gameplay and the nearly entirely new map that Epic dropped at the start of Season 3, player counts have been heading back towards the sort of numbers we saw in Season 1 and 2. In other words: Not great, Bob! According to fortnite.gg, which collates players numbers from the Fortnite API, the average number of players in BR is down 37% in September from August so far. We had the usual big spike of players right at the start of Season 4 in the middle of August, but the falloff has been steady ever since, and the "Fortnite is dead" crowd has emerged once again. But what's going on, really? Is Fortnite dying, or is this just the usual seasonal ebb and flow of player traffic? It's not an easy question to answer from the outs…