Last week, Fortnite Festival had its first-ever week in which only one new jam track hit the shop, which sent Festival players into a tizzy over the possibility that Epic is winding down support for the mode like the company did last year with Rocket Racing. On Tuesday, Epic lent some credibility to those concerns by once again announcing only one new jam track for the week.
This week’s new track is at least a famous one, Old Town Road (Remix) by Lil Nas X featuring Billy Ray Cyrus–one of the biggest hits of the 21st Century. Last week’s lone track, by contrast, was the EDM track Slay! by Eternxlkz. Typically, Festival has had three or more songs each week since it launched in December 2023, and so dedicated fans have been extremely worried about what this change in procedure means–there’s a lot of despair going around on the Festival Reddit, where the top six threads are currently about this. See here and here and here.
This is just the most recent concerning piece of news for Festival fans this year. Before this year, all Fortnite Festival jam tracks were in the shop at the same time, meaning you could buy any song at any time–but during this past spring, Epic removed most of the tracks from the shop and shifted them to a FOMO-driven model like everything else in the item shop, where the available tracks rotate regularly and only stick around for a few days at a time.
Despite all that, Fortnite Festival did just bring out Bruno Mars as its new seasonal headliner with ABC by the Jackson 5 on the Music Pass, and most Epic employees are off work on the company’s summer break. Perhaps the situation will change later in the month.