Travis Scott’s Livestreamed Concert Broke ‘Fortnite’ Gaming Records

Thursday night saw a new record fall for the mega popular battle royale game Fortnite, but it had nothing to do with firing pixelated weapons. A live Travis Scott in-game concert drew record players to watch the in-game spectacular, as Scott debuted a new collaboration with Kid Cudi and a lot of special effects for the streamed concert performance.

On Friday, Fortnite announced that the appearance broke a record for gamers playing during the event, with a whopping 12.3 million concurrent players in-game during the show.

Fortnite maker Epic has said encore presentations of the performance will run a few more times, in case you missed it. But it shows just how big an attraction a virtual concert is these days. Video games have become a place of escape for gamers during the pandemic, but also of musical refuge. Two different benefit concerts are taking place in the Minecraft universe, and others have been in the works in various video games in recent weeks.

Fortnite in particular is no stranger to concert events. The previous record was held by DJ Marshmello’s in-game concert drew 10.3 million players in 2019. It’s also held movie tie-ins at its Risky Reels location in-game, most notably a Star Wars: Rise Of Skywalker trailer that actually contained a key piece of plot that didn’t appear anywhere else.

It’s clear by now that these in-game promotions not only draw huge crowds, but that they can actually be entertaining as well as newsworthy. So expect to see more of them in the future.

Written by: Uproxx