Fortnite OG tests reveal how many bots are in matches and it’s incredibly high
Epic GamesA new study on Fortnite OG mode reveals a startling fact: lobbies are dominated by bots.
Epic Games introduced bots in Chapter 2 to fill lobbies, level the playing field, and support newcomers. Bots mimic players with low skill levels, performing basic tasks like shooting, building, and looting.
You can usually spot a bot by its robotic movements and nonsensical behavior – missing shots, not crouch-walking, and opening chests only to walk away empty-handed.
Bots aren’t exactly everyone’s favorite. Competitive players despise them for being too predictable, boring, and disruptive in high-level matches. Overall, though, the community has come to accept that in a non-ranked match, you’ll run into a few bots. But it’d appear that there are more than a few.
After Fortnite OG’s launch in early December, a Fortnite leaker ran tests and discovered that only 12 of 100 players in matches were human – 88% were bots.
You didn’t git gud, you’re just playing against bots
Player and leaker AllyJax tested Fortnite OG mode across multiple lobbies and regions. Results were consistent and clear: the number of human players capped at 12. In some cases, only 11 real players appeared.
We reached out to them to ask how they came to this conclusion, and they shared their testing process with us:
“There’s an endpoint you can check to determine how many players are connected to a server at any given time.” We asked AllyJax about the Discord bot’s disclaimer (May not be exact), and they explained that “it’s because it also counts real player spectators, and not just alive players.”
It’s hard not to deride this as a bug, especially with Fortnite OG seeing an all-time high player count in both ranked and normal modes. When we asked AllyJax why they were compelled to run the test, they explained he and his regular group is not “terribly fond of bots,” so they run tests looking for bots periodically.
Today, they found just eight human players in their match when they first tested. “We assumed it may have been a fluke,” they said, “maybe everyone that game had just landed the same POI and eliminated each other.” But soon, the alleged bug turned into a feature. After playing the match out and winning, a win that they explain was earned by winning one real gunfight during the entire match, they ran the test on the next match and found out that it was just 12 real players.
They were playing in squads, which means that the max number of enemy groups they could’ve fought was two. “And that’s assuming the teams don’t eliminate each other or simply leave the game,” AllyJax told us.
This prompted AllyJax and their team to run a testing rampage on several matches across many regions and modes. And the results are that Fortnite OG mode – a wildly popular throwback experience – is mostly made up of bot-filled lobbies. AllyJax’s findings support that no match had more than 12 humans, regardless of circumstances.
The results shocked Fortnite’s community. Players described the situation as “genuinely crazy” and speculated that ranked modes might be drawing players away from OG matches.
Ranked OG mode still guarantees “100% human” lobbies, AllyJax assured, while regular Battle Royale modes have a higher human-to-bot ratio (40 real players on average).
Some players replicated the test and verified the results using the Discord bot from The Dub server. In fact, you can try it out yourself if you join this community.
Epic Games has not addressed the study’s accuracy or clarified whether the findings reflect a bug or an intended feature.