The Fortnite Android beta recently launched on Android mobile devices. Reportedly, some players are already suffering from performance issues, which has left Epic Games working on a fix. The beta is only available on select Android devices too, which doesn’t necessarily bode well for the upcoming beta expansion if the studio is unable to fix the problem.
Performance Issues In The Fortnite Android Beta?
Epic Games reported having been notified of the problem in a Tweet issued yesterday. Apparently, players on 4GB Android devices are those affected by the issue; seemingly because the devices are struggling to run Fortnite when background applications are running.
We have seen reports that some players on 4GB Android devices are encountering an issue causing poor performance. This is due to multiple background applications running–leaving the device without enough memory for Fortnite. We are investigating and working on a fix!
— Fortnite (@FortniteGame) August 14, 2018
At present, the Fortnite Android beta is only available on some Android mobile devices; the Samsung Galaxy S7, S7 Edge , S8, S8+, S9, S9+, the Note 8, Note 9, Tab S3, and Tab S4. As the beta goes on, Epic Games plans to make it available on an increasingly large array of Android devices. President of Epic Games, Tim Sweeney, recently stated in an interview with Variety that Fortnite could reach 250 million players on the Android platform. However, that number is actually “modest” when compared to the size of the total Android market.
“Our expectations for 2018 are modest because Fortnite requires a recent high-end Android smartphone,” he stated; “Fortnite brings the game’s full PC and console experience to Android; of the roughly 2.5 billion Android devices, we estimate around 250 million are Fortnite-ready.”
At present, Epic Games has not addressed the performance issues currently affecting players on 4G devices. It’s unclear whether the developer can do much to address the issue, given that it seems to be caused by a lack of available memory due to background applications running at the same time as the game. Hopefully, there is something they can do, and they put out a patch as soon as possible.