Fornite’s Battle Royale mode just got a new 50 vs 50 mode which is online now – yes, right now.
It’s a limited-time event mode which you can join as either a solo player or in a squad, and it’ll be available in the game until 17th December.
Announced at this morning’s Game Awards, the mode comes as Fornite Battle Royale’s player numbers have hit another milestone. The game now has 30m players, developer Epic has said. Last weekend, more than 1.3m people were playing concurrently (across PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One).
Fornite system designer Eric Williamson told me a bit more about the new 50 vs. 50 mode earlier this week.
“There’s no friendly fire, you’ll see a chevron above your allies so you’ll know they are on your team and you’ll be able to revive down but not out players on your team,” he explained.
The addition isn’t permanent – yet – as Epic wants to offer more of these time-limited extra modes in the future to keep the game feeling fresh, he continued.
“We’ve been releasing a gameplay-affecting item or system every week. It’s really important to keep the meta changing on a week-by-week basis. Last week we added the smoke grenade, and before that it was the bush consumable.
“We think 50 vs 50 isn’t the only cool mode we can release – there are a lot of other ideas out there which could be fun. So we don’t want to – just yet – commit to having it on all the time. Also,” Williams concluded, “the core game will still be our meat and potatoes – we don’t want to replace that.”