Framerates Found to Impact Fire Rates of Fortnite’s Weapons

A steamer called DrLupo has discovered that framerates can impact the rate of fire of Fortnite’s weapons, giving those who play the game at 60FPS or higher and advantage over 30FPS players, a bug that will negatively impact the game on low-end PCs and the game’s 30FPS switch version. 

This bug was uncovered shortly after similar issues were found within Player Unknown’s Battlegrounds, a game that shares the same engine as Fortnite, though PUBG’s bigs are believed to have a greater impactful on gameplay. Reddit users have reported rate of fire differences that are as high as 15-20% in PUBG, though Fortnite appears to deliver less rate of fire variance. 

Epic Games has stated that they are “investigating a fix” for this issue, which means that the bug will likely be patched out of the game in the near future. Digital Foundry has also jumped in on the action, comparing 300FPS, 60FPS and 30FPS gameplay, finding a 5.2% difference in Fortnite’s rate of fire when moving from 30FPS to 60FPS while having no changes between 60 and 300 FPS.  

This discovery means that everyone who plays Fortnite at lower framerates will be at a disadvantage to those who play at higher framerates, though it is safe to say that this 5.2% difference won’t make a big difference in most encounters. Even so, this bug is a huge issue for the game’s competitive environment.