A new Fortnite season can be as exciting as it is excruciating. Players who tapered off during a previous season will be out in full force, meaning that clip-farming content creators and 13-year-olds who can spend five hours a day in-game will be in every single lobby. The Simpsons mini-season, however, feels different for some fans. There are more players than usual wanting to explore Springfield, some of whom might be rusty after a prolonged absence or perhaps new to the game altogether. And these totally chill players who just want to check out The Simpsons couch log in only to get absolutely destroyed by the competition.
Players are uploading compilations of themselves dying either right after landing on the island, or very early on after a match starts. Mostly, though, they’re complaining.
“The Simpsons mini-season feels way sweatier than usual,” one Redditor writes, “Every match is full of absolute tryhards.”
“Can y’all stop trying so hard?” another Reddit thread with a deep-fried image of a man screaming pleads. “It’s the damn Simpsons season stop playing like your lives depend on it.”
As dedicated fans know, “sweats” refer to players who, well, play to win. Sweats gained the moniker in part because they treat the title like an identity and will wear specific skins, like soccer jerseys or Christmas trees, that are meant to be interpreted as a claim to superiority. During The Simpsons season, the Marge skin in particular is now associated with sweaty players, as is the recent pig skin that was given out for free during the recent Fortnitemares event.
You’d think coming out on top would be the point of a game that crowns a victor, but it’s more complicated than that. Sweats are notorious enough that even Epic Games makes fun of them. The victims add complexity here as well. Sometimes people play to check out whatever’s new, with no real interest in competing. Other times, fans might be in a battle royale match simply to finish a specific quest. There are even players whose sole interest in battle royale is to wipe areas of the map clean by destroying every single building.
The Simpsons, however, is about as mainstream as you can get. Boomers and Gen Z alike are plenty familiar with Bart Simpson. Sure enough, Fortnite‘s new season is reaching highs of up to 2.6 million players — far from record-breaking, but high for a mini-season. Many of these players are also explicitly playing battle royale rather than the wildly popular Brainrot mode, which at times commands a bigger audience than Fortnite‘s main offering.
The difference between a sweat and a normal player is the level of intensity. Most people will shoot first and ask questions later, but sweats will go out of their way to secure a kill.
Sweats are “so desperate to unalive me, they’ll chase me across the map,” one exasperated TikTok commenter writes.
That level of commitment stands out when players are in battle royale mode over, say, Ranked — where the entire point is to hulk out. Sweats are so bad right now, they’re being called an infestation.
One factor that’s killing the vibe is that the Springfield map is smaller than the usual Fortnite island. The mini-event only allows for 80 players over the usual 100, but with fewer points of interest and areas to loot, players are forced to interact with one another faster than they otherwise would. On a standard Fortnite island, it’s perfectly possible to play a match for 10 or 15 minutes without encountering a soul. Good luck trying to avoid anyone during The Simpsons event, though.
Another reason people are having a hard time right now is game balance. Epic Games tunes Fortnite regularly, but the start of a season brings with it a new arsenal of untested weapons. Right now, Krusty’s pistol seems to be terrorizing unwitting players. Bots, which are meant to help ease players into the experience, are still present in matches and as useless as ever. But fans say that the current lobbies actually have more humans than usual for The Simpsons season.
The sweat problem might feel particularly pronounced for adults who come home from work and are hoping to wind down with a nice game of Fortnite. Instead, they’re loading up into a lite eSports experience.
If nothing else, the exasperation around The Simpsons season highlights Epic Games’ continued struggle to make Fortnite an approachable experience. New modes, like the Lego adventure or the musical aspects of the game, are meant to provide fun experiences for people who have no idea what a kill/death ratio is. But battle royale and its complex build mechanics and sweaty players remains the star of the Fortnite show — which will be jarring for anyone with a passing interest in the game.
Things might eventually calm down, as sweats lose interest in the game and Epic Games implements a better balance for the game. For now, though, everyone is suffering.
“The Simpsons season, is the sweat fest of the century,” one X user writes. “Holy f***”
“This is the sweatiest season of Fortnite of all time,” another X user declares.
