We're being hyperbolic, of course. Fortnite is unlikely to die anytime soon, with tens of millions of players all over the world, on different devices, all gunning each other down to try to earn one more victory royale. But that doesn't mean Epic can't use its bots to balance out the game a little better.
One of the grandest difficulties with 100-person games is matchmaking, because it's hard to find 100 players who are close enough in skill level not to weight the experience too much in anyone's favor. Epic hopes that by adding bots into games to round out the numbers, it can also round out the skill level, making it so that everything feels that bit more balanced and fair.
Combined with a more capable matchmaking engine, Epic claims that new players will be matched with larger numbers of bots, and as they improve, they'll have fewer and fewer bots, and more and more real people in their games, increasing the challenge and unpredictability of play.
Bots will not be present in competitive play whatsoever, we're told.
This will all start with Fortnite Season 11, which doesn't have have an official start date as of yet. It's likely to come in the first-half of October, however.
