Week 35

5.0K new islands launched this week (+2.9%), maintaining the elevated supply pace from Week 34, but active islands - those crossing the 5-play floor - fell again to 49.2K (-3.3% week on week). The gap between new islands entering the system and islands finding a meaningful audience continues to widen. Supply is being produced at a rate the discovery layer is not absorbing. The island removal figure demands attention this week. Epic removed 3.1K islands (+33.9% week on week), contributing to a net gain of only 1,658 live islands across the full week despite 5.0K being published. At a removal rate of this magnitude, the weekly gross output of new islands is being substantially offset before most of them accumulate any play history. New island count alone is a poor indicator of ecosystem growth this week; the net live island figure tells the more accurate story. New creator intake fell to 760 (-20.7% week on week), a sharp single-week decline against a Week 34 figure of -2.6%. Active creators continued their slide at 23.1K (-3.7%). Total creator count still grows at +1% to 75.3K, but that growth is carried entirely by existing creators continuing to publish - the new entrant pipeline is contracting sharply. One week of this is a clear signal; a second consecutive week would indicate a structural shift in who is entering the ecosystem rather than a one-week variance.

12.5 minutes average session (+2.5%) is the only green engagement figure in the Week 35 table. Avg uniques per island slipped to 1.7K and avg CCU per island fell to 92.7, both softening from Week 34. The pattern is coherent: in a week where total plays fell 11.7%, individual island reach thinned, but players who did visit stayed marginally longer - consistent with an audience spending a portion of its time on Fortnite OG rather than browsing across multiple UGC islands. Fortnite OG's 1.1M peak CCU dominates the global table and represents a reactivation event, not organic growth. Battle Royale fell -41% to 785.0K in the same week - Epic's own titles cannibalising each other before UGC traffic was affected. In the UGC table, GO UP FOR BRAINROTS leads at 281.6K (+7.6%) while STEAL THE BRAINROT fell to 209.8K (-26.9%), the two ferins titles diverging sharply: the climb format gaining at the expense of the combat format. Star Wars Droid Tycoon by foad at 80.2K (+15.3%) is the strongest grower outside the brainrot cluster in the UGC CCU table - gaining ground in a week of overall UGC pressure. PILLARS by hive at 44.4K (+5.8%) and 1V1 WITH EVERY GUN at 31.9K (-6.9%) give hive two of the six UGC CCU positions alongside ferins' two. The top six UGC CCU slots are now primarily occupied by two creators - ferins and hive - with Star Wars Droid Tycoon by foad as the single independent presence. Format diversity at the very top of the UGC CCU chart narrowed this week compared to Week 34.

Top by Uniques

BOX PVP leads the uniques table at 7.6M - its strongest showing in recent weeks - with PILLARS at 6.0M and Piece Control 2v2 at 5.9M close behind. The format mix across the top six spans zone wars, shooter practice, party games, and simulation variants, a distribution broadly similar to Week 34 and confirming that the widest-audience islands continue to span multiple genres rather than concentrating in one format. The growth chart this week reads structurally differently from Week 34. The headline entry, +1 Push Boulder Escape by minho at 18.6K uniques and +169.3K%, is the largest in percentage terms, but 18.6K uniques is a mid-tier row audience in absolute terms, not a breakout. Every other entry in the growth table sits below 15K uniques. There is no equivalent to Week 34's Drain the Lake at 659.9K - the external amplification mechanism that drove that result did not repeat this week. The percentage figures on show are denominator effects from near-zero starts, not signals of discovery at meaningful scale. ADAM 1v1 Simplistic by creative.rudy at 14.0K uniques (+70.1K%) and CARLOX 1V1 BUILD FIGHT (200 PUMP) by carlox at 2.0K (+33.9K%) both operate in the build-fight adjacent space that BOX PVP dominates in the uniques table - smaller new entrants arriving in the same format. SPEED CAR GAME RAMP JUMP HORROR by uyj at 5.4K (+89.3K%) combines car game and horror elements with no direct equivalent in the top uniques list - a format experiment worth tracking in Week 36 to see whether the initial signal sustains.

D1 / D7 Retention Distribution

0-5% bucket WoW: +15664 islands (D1), +25859 islands (D7) · 90-100% bucket WoW: +252 islands (D1), +90 islands (D7)

Platform-weighted D1 fell to 37.97% (from 40.02% in Week 34) and D7 to 24.40% (from 27.92%) - both declining in a week where total plays also fell 11.7%. The 3.52-point D7 drop is the larger movement and suggests a week where the audience was more willing to sample but less likely to commit to a seven-day return habit, consistent with Fortnite OG pulling player time toward a new destination. 1V1 PRO clean by infnitepixel holds both leaderboard tops at 74.3% D1 (-13.8%) and 78% D7 (-9.1%). Both declined, yet this week's data carries a notable inversion: D7 now sits above D1 at 78% versus 74.3% - a reversal from Week 34 where D1 was slightly higher. The player base returning by day seven is now more reliable than the day-one bounce, suggesting a deeply habitual core audience that skips one-day returns but locks in by the end of the week. GO UP FOR BRAINROTS' D7 jumped to 55.7% (+17.7%) - a 17.7-point single-week gain for a metric that typically moves slowly, signaling a content or mechanical change that gave the format's audience a specific reason to return on day five, six, or seven. Night Party Royal by sgnl at 71% D7 and Box Fight & Zone Wars-FFA by kiyotakaaj at 67% D7 appear without prior-period change data - new entrants into the measured window, both posting D7 rates above Fight The Brainrot's 66.3%. The D1 table also adds two new entries: HARD PARKOUR W67W DEATHRUN by rodrii at 67% and LOADOUT DRAFT 1V1-2V2 by bolo4 at 66.5%, both without prior-period figures. A parkour deathrun island sitting in the D1 top six alongside brainrot and tycoon titles is the format-diversity signal of the week. Only Up Volcano by perec leads replay at 12.2x (+36.2%), up sharply from 8.4x in Week 34, while coold's two ForTomo islands hold second at 11.9x and third at 10.2x.

hive leads on uniques at 18.7M across 13 islands - up from 16.8M in Week 34, growing its reach in a week where total platform plays fell 11.7%, the one creator in the table expanding audience while the overall market contracted. ferins produces 498.8M minutes from 6.0M uniques - approximately 83 minutes per unique player - while also posting 55.4% D1, the highest creator-level retention in the current leaderboard. Dividing ferins' per-player depth by hive's (622.2M minutes across 18.7M uniques, or approximately 33 minutes per unique): ferins generates 2.5 times the engagement depth per player on roughly one-third of hive's audience. Both strategies are valid; neither is producing the other's output. bullseye at 12.7M uniques across 22 islands and 30.8% D1 and prettyboy at 4.9M uniques across 24 islands and 25.0% D1 represent the catalog-breadth approach at two different efficiency levels. prettyboy's 24 islands generating 4.9M uniques at 25.0% D1 versus ferins' 6 islands generating 6.0M uniques at 55.4% D1 is the starkest portfolio-efficiency contrast in the table. rvb is a notable new entry at 5.8M uniques across 15 islands with 34.4% D1 - mid-breadth with retention that outpaces its island count. 3dh at 4.1M uniques, 13 islands, and 36.1% D1 posts the strongest retention among the new entries this week. The table now spans ten creators with three distinct operating profiles clearly on show: concentrated format with high retention (ferins, 6 islands, 55.4% D1), breadth at volume (bullseye, prettyboy, 22-24 islands), and mid-range portfolio with strong retention (3dh, rvb). All reach meaningful play and minute totals. What the new entries this week add is confirmation that the correlation between fewer islands and higher per-island retention holds across different creator types - it is not a ferins-specific effect.

heny62 holds all three top positions in avg min/player and all three are growing simultaneously: peak battle assault at 1.2K (+53.9%), Hedge Parkour at 1.1K (+17.3%), and hop mountain battle at 1.1K (+30.9%). In Week 34, the pattern across the heny62 islands was mixed - some growing, some declining. This week all three accelerated together, which points to a format-level or discovery-level event rather than individual island content improvements. When a creator's entire portfolio improves on the same depth metric in the same week, the trigger is worth identifying. THE LADDER by codeseany appears at 997.3 avg min/player without a prior-period figure, a new entrant into the measured window at a depth that rivals the heny62 cluster. 4 zombie survival by reely at 712.1 (+26.2%) confirms that survival formats continue to produce the longest session depths in the quality table, consistent with the pattern across multiple recent weeks. FREE BUILDING PRACTICE 1V1 & ALL by bnstudios holds fifth at 832.4 (-1.4%) while simultaneously leading both the D1 (812.2) and D7 (715.9) retention-adjusted engagement tables by wide margins - the single-metric dip is minor against its overall standing as the deepest-engagement island in the report. The CCU growth table this week features smaller absolute islands than Week 34's breakout list. SUPER CRAZY FUN RED VS BLUE SUPI by sebaxio1 leads with a reported 272% absolute CCU and +27.1K% week-on-week growth rate, but the absolute figure is small - this is early-stage momentum, not a chart entrant at meaningful scale. CLOSE YOUR EYES [HORROR] by isaac_ll at 11.4K% CCU and +17.9K% growth is the Horror entry in a week where Horror also produced a notable Epic chart mover - two signals in the same genre in the same week.

Category Share of Plays

Fastest-Growing Categories

Top Categories by D1

Category Intensity (Plays / Island)

Star Wars remains the dominant IP label at 45.7% category share, but that figure slipped from 49.1% in Week 34 - a 3.4-point decline in a single week. KPOP Demon Hunters captured most of that movement, rising from 13.9% to 18.2%, a 4.3-point gain. LEGO moved from 14.6% to 16.1%. The three-way cluster at the top of the table is now tighter than it has been in recent tracking: Star Wars leads at 45.7% but the combined KPOP Demon Hunters and LEGO share at 34.3% is the closest it has been to the Star Wars figure since our category tracking began in April 2026. The intensity table - plays per island - is where the most significant structural shift appears this week. KPOP Demon Hunters moved from 2.6K plays per island in Week 34 to 3.6K, matching Star Wars at the same intensity level and sharing the co-top position. Two weeks ago Star Wars led intensity by a meaningful margin; this week they are equal. For a creator weighing which IP label to build into, that parity changes the calculation: KPOP Demon Hunters now delivers equivalent per-island output to Star Wars while holding a smaller total share, meaning a smaller island pool is generating that output. Squid Game at 1.6K and The Walking Dead Universe at 1.0K hold steady mid-table positions. Rocket Racing sits last at 508 plays per island - less than half the next-lowest listed category - for the second consecutive week, pointing to a persistent audience demand or discovery problem rather than a temporary variance. Fall Guys at 3% category share is the smallest listed entry. Its intensity figure does not appear in the ranked table, which limits the full per-island analysis. If its per-island plays were meaningfully competitive with the listed categories, the table would likely reflect it.

Genre Leaderboards

Player-weighted across each genre's islands. Peak CCU is the sum of island peak concurrents; retention is the returning-player rate.

Genre Weekly Rollup

Islands by Genre

Top Chart Position This Week

Averaged over 6 days of available data.

Biggest Chart Movers

Movers computed among top-100 chart positions.

Supply vs. Exposure

68.1K Shooter islands lead Epic's own genre chart by island count (+1.7%), up from 66.9K in Week 34. This chart is a completely separate system from both the Genre Leaderboards and Category Analytics - positions here reflect Epic's own algorithm weighting, not raw play volume, and none of the island counts or totals in this section correspond to figures in those other sources. The data this week is averaged over 6 days of available data rather than a full seven, so position deltas carry a minor structural caveat and should not be treated as a complete weekly picture. The defining chart story this week is Deathrun & Platformer. Three of the eight biggest movers are parkour or deathrun islands: Only Up Chapter 2! gained +66.8 positions (from avg #71.4 to avg #4.7), the largest single move in the table; HARD PARKOUR 25 LEVELS gained +65.9 (from avg #85.6 to avg #19.7); RTM1/PARKOUR gained +62.9 (from avg #92.6 to avg #29.7). That concentration of upward movement in one genre in one week is more consistent with a genre-level algorithm weighting than with individual island quality improvements - the format appears to be in an active algorithmic window. Guess The Song TOP 100 in Music & Rhythm gained +51.9 positions, the strongest Music & Rhythm chart movement in several weeks of our tracking. Simulation & Tycoon's island count contracted to 5.4K (-2.3%) this week while the genre leads every performance leaderboard. Supply is thinning in the highest-performing genre - fewer islands entering the space with the strongest retention and CCU metrics. In the supply vs. exposure table, Adventure & RPG leads at 4.0% (180 row slots for 4.6K islands), with Music & Rhythm fractionally ahead at 4.1% (83 slots for 2.0K islands, though the smaller absolute slot count limits scale potential). Shooter sits at 0.2% - the most congested genre in the ecosystem. goodgamers holds simultaneous chart leadership in Horror (Murder Mystery, avg #1.0 for 6 days) and Strategy (Bed Wars, avg #1.0 for 6 days). hive holds dual chart leadership in Battle Royale (BOX PVP, avg #1.3) and Party & Mini Games (PILLARS, avg #1.0) for the full 6-day window.

Creator 0x7 occupies all six positions in the favorites-per-player table this week: invisible boxfight at 9.0 (+244.7%), Open BoxFight at 8.7 (+121.8%), Dark Wall Phase Trainer at 7.9 (+713.2%), Dark Sniper Fight at 7.6 (+2.4K%), Minimalist Blue 1v1 at 5.2 (+427.4%), and 1v1 Blackout at 4.7 (+156.1%). Every island posted triple-digit or higher week-on-week gains. The six-for-six sweep from a single creator - compared to hippogamer's three-for-three in Week 34 - confirms that creator-brand loyalty operating across a tight format cluster is the repeatable mechanism behind extreme favoriting rates, not format alone. What 0x7's sweep reveals is that players are bookmarking a practice catalog, not individual islands. The six titles cover distinct sub-formats within the same zone (phase training, sniper fight, boxfight variants, 1v1), and a player favoriting multiple titles is effectively maintaining a personal training suite. The creator handle 0x7 appears consistently alongside every title in the discovery row, functioning as a recognisable quality signal for players who have favorited one island and then encounter another in a row. Infinite gun game arena by spirit.game leads recommendations at 3.1 per player (+97.9%), up from 2.2 last week - the algorithm is surfacing this island more aggressively than its player base would suggest on its own. Danix 1v1 by dani88 at 0.8 (+2.2K%) shows the same early-signal pattern as multiple prior-week recommendation entrants: a large percentage gain off a near-zero prior base indicating the recommendation system has recently begun routing players to the island.

Week 35’s defining story was Fortnite OG’s return, reaching 1.1M peak CCU. It pulled plays and minutes away from UGC, while the brainrot-tycoon cluster remained strong. ferins reached 55.4% creator-level D1, while GO UP FOR BRAINROTS gained 17.7 points of D7 despite platform-wide D7 declining. Key signals: 1. Volume fell, but players held Total plays dropped to 1.13B (-11.7%) and minutes to 14.10B (-9.4%), while daily island players stayed nearly flat at 50.7M (-0.5%). Average session time increased to 12.5 minutes (+2.5%), suggesting players stayed on-platform but shifted where they spent time. 2. Fortnite OG disrupted the platform Fortnite OG reached 1.1M peak CCU (+1.6K% WoW), the biggest CCU event since our tracking began. Its return likely contributed to the wider drop in UGC plays and minutes. 3. Island supply tightened Epic removed 3.1K islands (+33.9%), new creators fell to 760 (-20.7%) and active islands dropped to 49.2K (-3.3%) for the second straight week. 4. Simulation & Tycoon remained strongest D1 rose to 45.9% (+8.8 points) and D7 to 34.4% (+6.4 points). Improving retention during a wider platform decline is a strong signal for the genre. 5. 0x7 swept favorites One creator held all six favorites-per-player positions, showing how a consistent multi-island format can build measurable creator loyalty. Key areas to monitor for Week 36: - Fortnite OG CCU: Whether its audience holds or declines. - ferins’ D1 at 55.4%: Another increase would strengthen the longer-term brainrot trend. - Active islands at 49.2K: A third weekly decline would suggest a broader supply shift. - New creators at 760: Continued weakness could reduce ecosystem diversity. - Deathrun & Platformer: Three of the eight biggest chart movers came from the genre. - Roguelike at 7.7x: Watch whether the row qualification bar keeps rising. Final tip: For existing islands, Week 35 shows the value of giving players a reason to return. Rotating challenges, timed rewards or mid-week updates can directly support D7 retention. For new islands, three genres stand out: - Roguelike: 92/100 opportunity score with relatively low top-level competition. - Deathrun & Platformer: Strong chart momentum with only 1.1% exposure. - Simulation & Tycoon: Leading performance while island supply fell -2.3%. Build where performance is strongest and supply is thinnest.