It’s been almost nine months since Epic Games sabotaged its own chart-topping game, resulting in Apple throwing Fortnite out of its stores and preventing Epic from updating the game on Apple devices.

For Fortnite players on the Mac, time has stood still. While Fortnite relentlessly evolves on PC and consoles – introducing new locations, a new weapons system and new enemies – Fortnite on Mac has become a time capsule, trapped in Chapter 2, Season 3, three entire seasons behind the main game.

Not only are Mac players frozen in time, they’re all alone too. Where it was once possible to fight other PC and console players, they can now only pick fights with one another. Is anyone still bothering with Battle Royale on the Mac? Or has Fortnite on Mac fizzled out? I returned to the game for the first time since the shut down to find out.

Welcome to desolation

The first thing that strikes you when firing up Fortnite on the Mac (no 76GB update necessary) is how empty it looks, even from the lobby screen.

Several features are greyed out, the games modes are strictly limited, your locker is full of old outfits. Epic will still sell you new outfits and V-Bucks – they’re not stupid enough to turn the money taps off completely – but there seems little point in dressing up here.

I fire up a Solo Battle Royale and get a stiff blast of de ja vu as I leap out of the Battle Bus. The outline of the island looks roughly the same, but there’s Frenzy Farm, and The Authority and Rickety Rig and all these other locations that have long since been wiped off the map in Fortnite proper.

I drop down in Lazy Lake – which is one of the first stops directly on the Battle Bus route – and it’s eerily quiet, as if the game has crashed. A named location early on the Battle Bus journey would normally be echoing with gunshots as players scramble for the best weapons, but there’s near silence. The sound of someone swinging a pickaxe at something, but that’s it. And yet the counter says there are more than 90 other players still alive…

Battle of the bots

It soon becomes clear that most of my fellow players aren’t players at all, but bots. Bots that land in random locations (hence the quiet of Lazy lake), bots that largely avoid confrontation, bots that are about as much fun to play with as a pencil sharpener.

I usually play with a controller, but my Mac has decided that’s no longer welcome here, and so I’m forced to play with keyboard and mouse – which feels much like writing with the wrong hand. Yet, even with these unfamiliar controls, I’ve smashed my way past three bots and I’m down to the final 20, without encountering another human soul.

Suddenly, there’s an unfamiliar clattering from above and someone’s swooping over in a helicopter – a vehicle long since removed from Fortnite. That must be a human player, the bots rarely bother with the choppers. I hop up and down, firing pointless rounds at their windscreen, in the sheer hope of engaging with another human player. But they can’t be bothered with me and fly off into the distance.

I’ve taken my eye off the storm circle and now I’ve got to sprint to safety towards Frenzy Farm. I’m focused on staying dry when a bullet whistles past my ear lobe. I instinctively reach for the build tools, before realizing I don’t know what the keyboard controls are, and now I’m being peppered by assault rifle fire. The kind of erratic but well-aimed fire that bots simply don’t deliver.

I’m so excited at the prospect of seeing another human player, and so helpless with the keyboard controls, that by the time I manage to shoot back I’m on my last legs, a bullet away from dying. I dodge and jump around as best I can, but the player takes me down – probably convinced he’s eliminated another useless bot. I’ve finished 16th.

Man against machine

I spectate the rest of my assassin’s game. My best guess is he comes across one other human player – a player so inept that he makes the bots look like navy seals. The assassin’s final three kills are taken by standing unprotected on a Frenzy Farm rooftop, picking off lone bots who are randomly running across open fields, only one of which ever returns fire. It is the saddest victory dance emote I’ve ever seen. There is no joy to be taken from winning like this.

I play another couple of games, finishing in the top ten twice despite my sheer incompetence with the controls. I come across more human players – my best guess is a half dozen in each match – but they’re not great. Perhaps their skills have been blunted by playing against gormless bots for months. If my Mac would recognize my controller, I’m pretty sure that I would clean up here – even fortysomething, reactions-like-a-moss-covered-boulder me.

But what would be the point? The wins you accrue in the Mac version don’t go on your record. Epic doesn’t recognize them anymore. The Mac is dead to them. And pretty much every other Fortnite player too…

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