Fornite’s ‘The Device’ event — and why so many people are furious about it — explained

Fortnite servers filled up in one minute — 30 minutes before scheduled start — locking out fans who’d waited for weeks for the live event.

On Monday, Epic Games’ online multiplayer game Fortnite finally released teaser footage of Chapter 2, Season 3 of the game: “The Device.” The event drew outrage from fans who couldn’t take in the event live due to limited server space.

If the above sentences may as well have been written in German to you, you’re in luck: We’ve got you covered.

Let’s dive into the event, what happened, why some fans are so mad, and what the fallout from this is expected to be. Actually, before we get into all that, we’ll start at the basic stuff. Let’s get you caught up.

So what is this now?

Fortnite is an online multiplayer video game that’s immensely popular with gamers of all ages, as well as Drake.

The game has several different ways to play, including a 100-person “Battle Royale” where you go up against 99 other people online in what’s essentially a shoot-em-up free-for-all.

To keep the game fresh, Fortnite periodically introduces new seasons and chapters to change up the map and introduce new elements to the game. “The Device” was the event celebrating the launch of Chapter 2, Season 3.

Uh…what?

A popular video game was showing off a new map to its fans.

Got it. So what’s the issue?

“The Device” event had already been delayed three times, so fans were pretty antsy about finally seeing the new look of the game they love. The event was slated to start at 2 p.m. yesterday, but Epic Games told fans to show up at 1:30.

By 1:31, the servers were completely full and they couldn’t get anyone else in.

So it’s like tickets to a concert sold out.

Exactly! But unlike a concert venue, there isn’t any, like, fire code limiting capacity for the people who should be able to attend one of these events. Really, the only thing limiting the size of this event is the server space that Epic is willing to commit to it.

They committed enough server space for it all to fill up in one minute.

So fans are mad.

Yep. And it’s not just totally sour grapes — Epic has shown it can get the server space to put on massive events. For a Travis Scott event they streamed, they handled massive numbers.

For this event, they either didn’t fully anticipate the demand or weren’t willing to fork over money for the additional servers, and so fans are peeved.

Hm. Interesting.

Yeah. They’ve got a point. But then again, the whole video was up on YouTube very shortly after the event.

So the people were just mad they had to wait a few minutes to watch something that’s on a computer anyway?

Listen, you said it. Not me.

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