Fortnite Season 4 Live Event briefly causes “Dead Game” to trend on Twitter

The Fortnite Live Event drew 1.6 million viewers on Twitch, with even more watching through YouTube and FacebookGaming, prompting fans to take to Twitter to sarcastically cry out “dead game.”

The 'Dead Game' label commonly gets applied to any popular game that sees even a modest dip in player engagement or player count, and therefore periodically gets applied to Fortnite at least twice a season. However, given that Fortnite is quite literally unplayable until the actual release of Fortnite Season 5, some have accurately pointed out that, at least temporarily, the game is actually dead.

But is Fortnite a dead game?

No. Not even close. Opinions about Fortnite aside, the battle royale regularly maintains a six figure population and runs regular events with millions of dollars backing them. The game partners with some of the most well known IPs in the world and even if it doesn’t always manage to break records every other day, it is very much alive and profitable.

Just because Fortnite isn’t a dead game doesn’t mean that people won’t call it one. There are a number of reasons why people occasionally call popular games dead, most obvious of which is simply to express dissatisfaction with the game.

Of course, someone calling Fortnite dead doesn’t necessarily mean that they don’t like it, it could more simply mean that they feel recent decisions have had a negative impact on the game.

However, some people genuinely do call a game dead as a means of attacking it and its fans. This is unfortunate and suggests that they wrap their identity too much in their tastes in media and can be comfortably ignored by fans.

In this case though, fans are simply mocking the label as Fortnite pulled in enough concurrent viewers to momentarily crash Twitch.

So Fortnite had 1.5M CCU on Twitch & 1.7M CCU on YouTubePeople be mad when I tell them Fortnite is not a dead game. I’m sorry but there is no other with this amount of authority. pic.twitter.com/xRMkMkhP4S

— AARON (@137Don) December 1, 2020

no one cares dead game 🤡

— Sam(bagged,Was Pogbafc69) (@LmerchantSam) December 1, 2020

Some of you never actually played a dead game and it shows.

— Wesley (@FortifyFri) December 1, 2020

Fortnite is actually unplayable so… dead game?

With Fortnite entering a period of downtime following the Galactus Event, some have pointed out that Fortnite is literally unplayable at the moment. In a very real sense it could be momentarily considered a dead game.

However, despite going from millions of viewers and hundreds of thousands of players to a flat zero, Fortnite is being kept alive by the millions of fans who have moved on to social media to engage in discussion, share theories, talk about what they think will be in the next season, or just to enjoy the brief window where they can jokingly call Fortnite a dead game.

“Dead game” pic.twitter.com/611YgrV4x8

— imackstudios (@ImackStudios) December 1, 2020

oMg DeAd GaMe pic.twitter.com/WAdt9rny0Q

— Anakin (@Anakin501_) December 1, 2020

Fortnite is quite literally a dead game until season 5

— ゴドGRNドゴ (@CEG_GrnBltz) December 1, 2020