Matchmaking is creating new public lobbies instead of filling existing ones, causing player fragmentation.
Please select what you are reporting on:
Unreal Editor for Fortnite
What Type of Bug are you experiencing?
Matchmaking
Steps to Reproduce
Publish a Creative/UEFN island with enough concurrent players.
Allow players to join the island through public matchmaking.
Wait until one or more public lobbies are active.
Continue allowing new players to join over time.
Observe that new public lobbies are frequently created instead of matchmaking players into existing lobbies that still have available slots.
Expected Result
Players should be matched into existing public lobbies whenever possible until they reach their player limit. New public lobbies should only be created when existing ones are full or cannot accept additional players.
Observed Result
The matchmaking system frequently creates new public lobbies even when existing public lobbies have plenty of available space. This splits the player base across many nearly empty lobbies, making it difficult for players to find populated games. The issue appears to fluctuate throughout the day, with some periods working normally and others creating new lobbies every few minutes.
Platform(s)
All
Island Code
9653-9433-1421
Additional Notes
This issue has been occurring for approximately the last one to two weeks.
It does not appear to be related to the island itself, as multiple creators have reported similar behavior. The frequency varies depending on the time of day. During some periods, matchmaking behaves normally, while at other times it creates new public lobbies every few minutes (sometimes in less than 20 minutes), even though existing lobbies are not full.
This significantly impacts player retention and discovery because the active player base is continuously split across multiple low-population sessions instead of being consolidated into the busiest lobby.
Even with both test players in their own party with region set to NA East for example, 1 of 2 join attempts when queued at the same time resulted in separate lobbies.
Ihave Tested Every Single Server and Only The Middle easts server are experiencing this issue Where Maps are Ghost towns With barely 1 or No Players and It Looks Like The Servers is Splitting Pc Players Into a seperate lobby then Consel Players
It looks like it’s working better now, and players are being matched into lobbies with the rest of the players. However, I can’t rule out that it may still happen occasionally.
Ihave Tested This Now In Mobile Android And Tested a Popular Island With 5K Concurrent players Called Murder Mystery And In Middle east Servers 3 players at most Are in Game Itested it again and same Results itested Europe And Europe Servers had a full Lobby at first try then second try igot 10/12 players Ithink This Issue is Network Related Not Consel Playing with Pc Related
Possible workaround for players getting empty public lobbies:
I was having an issue where public matchmaking kept putting me into empty sessions, especially on Middle East servers. Europe worked, but switching back to Middle East gave me empty lobbies again.
After testing, I found that my DNS/routing setup may have been affecting matchmaking. I had WireSock/Pi-hole involved in my DNS path. When I disabled it and let my PC use my router DNS instead, Middle East matchmaking started putting me into populated sessions again.
This may not fix it for everyone, but it is worth checking.
Things to try:
Check what DNS your PC is using.
Temporarily disable VPNs, WireSock, Pi-hole, custom DNS routing, or DNS filtering.
Flush DNS.
Restart Fortnite.
Try public matchmaking again in the affected region.
In Europe, it’s an issue with the servers Fortnite uses. It puts you into empty lobbies, and other times everything works correctly. Matchmaking is very unstable across all Creative mode maps, and it’s broken most of the time.