Fortnite breaks records again with 78.3 million players in August

FORTNITE'S popularity is showing no signs of waning, with 78.3 million players taking part in battles royale in August.

Epic Games announced that the summer month was the hit game's most popular to date, but also admitted that the huge number of players had "exposed weak points" in their systems.

Those problems came to the fore in the Summer Skirmish, Epic Games' first foray into official competition, which saw £6million in prize money put up for grabs over a series of weekend events.

Exposing those problems allowed Epic "to make targeted improvements to critical systems, such as stats and servers" ahead of next week's Fall Skirmish event series.

Another £7.6 million ($10 million) is up for grabs this time around, with Epic taking a leaf out of rival Blizzard's book by splitting competitors into five "clubs" that fans can then root for, rather than relying on them knowing or caring about individual players.

£3 million of the prize money will be reserved for the clubs to share among the players representing them.

Over 500 top Fortnite players as well as popular "community creators" have been invited to the event, and each has been allocated to one of the Fort Knights, Lucky Llamas, Dusty Dogs, Rift Riders and Bush Bandits.

Fans will even get the chance to join the clubs over the course of the events.

Epic says they may "induct a few new faces into the Fall Skirmish from the most dedicated Club supporters", inviting fans to submit videos "illustrating your dedication to a club" to be considered.

The tournament starts on Friday at 5p.m. UK time, and will culminate in six weeks time at TwitchCon, just before Hallowe'en from October 26-28.

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