Fortnite isn’t as popular as it once was. This is a big problem for Epic Games, and was cited as one of the main reasons for the layoffs of 1,000+ Epic employees on Tuesday. To further cut costs, Epic is also removing three lesser-played game modes from Fortnite.
On March 24, the official Fortnite Status account on Twitter announced that three Fortnite games were going to essentially be delisted from the free-to-play battle royale shooter/metaverse later this year. The affected modes are Rocket Racing, Ballistic, and Festival Battle Stage.
“We’ve built a lot of Fortnite modes, and in some cases, we failed to build something awesome enough to attract and retain a large player base,” said Epic in its message posted on social media. “We’re grateful for everyone who played.”
Which Fortnite games are being removed
Rocket Racing, the oldest of the three modes set to shut down, will go offline in October 2026. Epic says all of its official Rocket Racing tracks and islands, as well as all user-created islands built for Rocket Racing, will be removed from Fortnite. Epic says creators can move some Rocket Racing content to new standalone islands to avoid having them deleted. Racing quests are also being removed from the game next week. Cars and vehicle customization items purchased for Rocket Racing will continue to be usable in Fortnite and other user-made maps that support them.
Ballistic, Fortnite‘s attempt at a Counter-Strike-like competitive FPS, is being removed and turned off on April 16. Players can still enjoy the FPS mode and rank up until its removed next month. Epic says it plans to add more FPS game creation tools to UEFN to help people build their own modes like Ballistic in the future. The mode was added in December 2024.
Lastly, Festival Battle Stage is shutting down. This is different than the more popular, Guitar Hero-like rhythm game known as Fortnite Festival and the chill-out mode called Jam Stage. Battle Stage was a PVP-focused spin on a rhythm game that was… fine. The mode, which was added in 2024, is shutting down on April 16 alongside Ballistic. Epic also assured players that Battle Stage‘s death isn’t a sign that the company is giving up on music content in Fortnite.
“Music remains a major part of Fortnite, and we’ll continue to improve Festival Main Stage and Jam Stage, and the music features that are available everywhere in Fortnite,” said Epic.
While Epic has spent the last few years trying to build Fortnite into a Roblox-like multi-game platform, complete with thousands of user-created games and official dev-made modes, the results of this effort have been less than amazing. Many of these new modes are barely played compared to Fortnite‘s core battle royale variants.
With Epic looking to cut costs and make more money from Fortnite as player engagement starts to drop, it’s not surprising to see it start trimming the fat from the game itself. That might be good news for Epic’s bottom line, but it does seem like bad news for fans of those games and for creators looking to invest time into Fortnite. Why spend weeks making content for modes that could be removed in the near future?
