Fortnite is adding ranked play in case you need another way to find out you're not good enough

Bobarista Helsie spills milk tea on a Fortnite loading screen

(Image credit: Sam McKenzie/Epic Games)

Fortnite has temporarily had leaderboards before, with limited-time modes like Solo Showdown and Blitz Showdown adding more competitive options, and Arena mode has its Hype Score and Bus Fare, but now the long-running battle royale is adding a way to determine your worth by labeling yourself Silver or Gold or whatever. As the Fortnite Team at Epic has announced, Arena is being discontinued and ranked play will arrive in the v24.40 update.

Rank improvement will be based on the number of kills a team or solo player scores in a match (with kills later in the match and kills of high-rank players worth more), as well as their placement at the end. A progress bar tracking how far players are from either hitting the next rank or falling back down to the previous one will appear on the left side of the lobby screen, and team matchmaking will be based on the highest-ranked member of each team.

A handful of balance changes will affect ranked play:

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Material caps will be decreased from 999 to 500.
Harvesting rates will be slightly increased.
Players will drop 50 of each material when they are eliminated.

Players will be able to work their way up through eight categories: Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum, Diamond, Elite, Champion, and Unreal. Everything from Bronze through Diamond will be divided into three ranks, while Elite, Champion, and Unreal will each contain a single rank. Hitting Unreal will mean you stay at that rank for the rest of the season, and get to join the leaderboard, with a number after your name tracking your standing on it.

Ranked play will be an option in both battle royale (solo, duos, and squads) and zero build (duos), with a separate rank tracked for each. Just set the toggle in the lobby before finding a match to turn it on—though new players will have to complete a quest to outlast 500 opponents before they can enter ranked play.

Ranked Season Zero will run until the end of Fortnite Chapter 4 Season 3, and will be an opportunity for the developers to "make any adjustments to issues and concerns that arise" before ranked seasons begin following the same schedule as the regular ones. Seasonal cosmetics can be earned by completing a Ranked Urgent Quest before the end of a match, with Season Zero's final reward an emote that displays your rank color called the Burn Bright Emote.

Fortnite recently became an Olympic sport, sort of, joining Gran Turismo, Chess.com, and other videogames in the Olympic Esports Series 2023.

Jody's first computer was a Commodore 64, so he remembers having to use a code wheel to play Pool of Radiance. A former music journalist who interviewed everyone from Giorgio Moroder to Trent Reznor, Jody also co-hosted Australia's first radio show about videogames, Zed Games. He's written for Rock Paper Shotgun, The Big Issue, GamesRadar, Zam, Glixel, Five Out of Ten Magazine, and Playboy.com, whose cheques with the bunny logo made for fun conversations at the bank. Jody's first article for PC Gamer was about the audio of Alien Isolation, published in 2015, and since then he's written about why Silent Hill belongs on PC, why Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale is the best fantasy shopkeeper tycoon game, and how weird Lost Ark can get. Jody edited PC Gamer Indie from 2017 to 2018, and he eventually lived up to his promise to play every Warhammer videogame.