The Fortnite "Treasure Hunter" mini-season attracted a massive number of players on its launch day, prompting Epic to temporarily enable login queues. Data from HYPEX and the Fortnite Bot indicated that concurrent online players reached approximately 4.5 million, with peak queue times showing around 12 minutes.
Some social media users claimed even longer wait times. By the time TheGamer published its article, the login queue had disappeared, allowing the author to enter matches normally, although matchmaking wait times were slightly longer than usual.
This mini-season features collaborations with One Piece and A$AP Rocky. TheGamer's author believes another major reason for the surge in players was the rare "Pirate Ship Tokens." According to their description, players who find these tokens can unlock nearly all items in the Item Shop for free over 14 days, including emotes and character skins, without spending V-Bucks.
TheGamer's author viewed this high-value limited-time reward as a bold operational move, speculating that Epic might be aiming to retain players ahead of the release of GTA VI. However, this motive has not been officially confirmed by Epic; what is certain is that the new season's first day saw around 4.5 million concurrent players and login queues.