Fortnite: Ballistic will be officially launching in 2025

7 January 2025

In a little over seven years, Fortnite has grown into one of the biggest and most famous international esports title in the world, and probably in history. Epic Games released the free-to-play battle royale game back in 2017 and has attracted hundreds of millions of players to its servers since then. But, as the famous saying goes, if you’re not moving forward, you’re moving backward, and they live by that saying at Epic Games. That’s why the developer will be releasing a much-anticipated new game mode, called “Ballistic, which will introduce a first-person shooter perspective to the Fortnite experience.

Early Access since December

“Perspective is everything”, wrote Epic Games on the official Fortnite website on December 7th, 2024, “Welcome to Ballistic, a new first-person Fortnite experience. Launching in early access on December 11 with Ranked + Unranked, Ballistic is an adrenaline-filled, round-based 5v5 competitive game mode where strategy, tactical teamwork, and individual prowess are essential for victory.”

The new first-person game mode for Fortnite had already been announced back in May of 2024, but since then, it still took more than six months before players could really get a first feel of it. As part of the Early Access, players were able to battle it out on one map (Skyline 10), and with a standard starting set of weapons plus a limited number of items. On top of that, Epic Games also immediately introduced two Ballistic game modes: Ranked, for more competitive players, and Unranked, for more casual players.

“In Ballistic, players are sorted into two teams at the start of the match: attackers and defenders”, writes Epic Gams, “Attackers aim to plant a reality-tearing Rift Point Device at one of two sites on the map, while defenders do their best to thwart the device from being planted and detonated. There are no respawns in Ballistic — a round is over if the Rift Point Device explodes, or either team is fully eliminated. After 6 rounds, players will swap sides, giving defenders a chance to be attackers and vice-versa. The game is over when either team has won 7 rounds total!”

Full Release later this year

As you probably realized by now (or already knew for a while), Fortnite: Ballistic is particularly aimed at gamers who love tactical team-based shooters in the style of, for example, Counter-Strike. Epic Games wants to tap into that segment as well with its new game mode. As a result, hopes are quite high for Ballistic’s full release, which is set to take place sometime later this year. No exact date has been announced by the developer as of yet, though.

As to what we can expect in the meantime, there is a lot to look forward to and even more to speculate about. In any case, Epic Games has already said that more maps will gradually be added to the current Early Access version, and adjustments to elements like weapons, items and overall gameplay will be made based on player feedback.