What Happened to Virtual Concerts?

Written By: Nolan Durand

Edited by: Cameron Green

It’s April 2020, and everyone online is talking about the Travis Scott concert happening in Fortnite. It spawns countless memes and discussions for a week. Fast forward to today, PARTYNEXTDOOR hosts a concert in Fortnite and nobody is talking about it. This leads to the question: What happened to the hype around virtual concerts?

While most people think the Travis Scott Fortnite concert to be the pioneer of these virtual concerts, this style of performance has much earlier roots. Duran Duran partnered with the game Second Life to create islands where they could host live concerts in 2011. This event showed that it was possible for concerts to be held in video games paving the way for what would come in the future. 

Open Pit is an event planner for Minecraft concerts. They’ve been hosting virtual concerts in Minecraft since 2018, with different spins on real life events. They’ve hosted events like Coalchella, Fire Festival, and Square Garden, with real performances from artists. Hosted in 2020, Square Garden had performances from high profile artists like Charli XCX and 100 Gecs, providing a real event during covid when restrictions prevented people from going to in-person concerts. 

Poster promoting Open Pit's "Square Garden"

Fortnite began hosting concerts in 2019 with its Marshmello concert. While primitive compared to what would come later, it showed that the game could have a live performance for thousands of players at once. 

Fortnite's Marshmello concert, "Party at Pleasant Park"

The Travis Scott concert was the next concert held in Fortnite, and it showed what a virtual concert could be. It introduced many brand new features in the game, like having visuals such as a giant Travis Scott towering over the players and game world or having the players travel to space. These features made the concert an unique experience for fans of the game and the artist alike. They also kept the event limited, like a real concert. It could only be experienced a few times during a couple of days.

Fortnite's Travis Scott concert, "Travis Scott's Astronomical"

Fortnite would repeat this concept for Ariana Grande,  and other games like Roblox started implementing concert series. They hosted artists like Lil Nas X, Charli XC, and Twenty One Pilots, keeping the same idea of having a concert that normally can’t be achieved in real life but could be in-game. PUBG went on to host Blackpink in their own concert, jumping in on the trend when it was hot.

PUBG Mobile's Blackpink concert, "Blackpink: The Virtual"

With the success of these concerts you would think that this was a sure-fire way to keep players interested and bring in new players to all these games, but games like Roblox haven’t hosted a virtual concert since 2023. The Blackpink concert was the only concert for PUBG.

Fortnite continued hosting concerts, but they became lazier and lazier. Instead of being limited time events like real concerts, they were offered unlimitedly for a week or two. They also started creating the concerts via their in-game creator, “Creative Mode”. These changes made the concerts feel less like a spectacle, and more commonplace. The concerts became licensed creative maps with some uninspiring game play that you could see in any map. Some concerts like those in the soundwave series were just recordings of the artist during a live performance. The Kid LAROI concert was just in-game screens showing one of his performances. It was clear that Fortnite concerts had lost all the creativity and passion present in the original events.

Fortnite's The Kid LAROI concert, "The Kid LAROI's Wild Dreams"

The only virtual concerts that continued to do well were the fan made ones from other games, like the Open Pit Minecraft festivals, and some made by fans in Roblox. The Roblox events had people pretend to be famous artists like Playboi Carti and have them only perform at a certain time. While not as visually impressive as the official virtual concerts, it helped keep the fun of having a limited time event. 

Fortnite has done a few other virtual concerts modeled like their old ones. The Big Bang event had a short performance from Eminem that brought back the visuals that you normally couldn't experience in game. It was also a one time limited event keeping the thrill of only being able to see this once, like a real concert. They also did this again for the Remix season Finale with performances from Snoop Dog, Ice Spice, Eminem, and Juice WRLD. 

After these events, they went back to the boring unlimited “Creative” events with the Metallica concert, Sabrina Carpenter concert, and now the PARTYNEXTDOOR concert. These concerts were just being Creative Mode maps you could play anywhere. They didn’t bring in anything new for the artist, the game, or the player. 

Fortnite's Sabrina Carpenter concert, "Dance with Sabrina"

Today, you won’t see people talking about these official concerts like they did in 2020. These concerts used to take over the internet with their visuals and limited time feel. People felt like they had to be there to experience the event, much like a real concert. Removing that time crunch hurt these events by making them feel less special. That’s why fan events like those in Roblox or the Open Pit concerts can still be successful, even with their lower production value.

The spectacle of these events has declined over time. Before, these events truly felt like a one time thing that you couldn’t miss. The visuals were things that you could only ever see once and wouldn't be reused in other parts of the game. Now those events just feel like something you could play anywhere. That loss of spectacle also made these events much less talked about online, leading to less players caring about these events. That's why when PARTYNEXTDOOR has a performance in Fortnite nobody cares. His event won’t bring anything different to the game that you haven’t seen before. 

Virtual concerts have declined in quality over the past few years, the loss of unique visuals and being unlimited time hurt these events and ended up killing them in games like Roblox. Also these events became lazier almost like a quick way to draw in players for games like PUBG and Fortnite. The only successful virtual concerts are smaller fan made ones that keep themselves limited helping with the overall appeal. For these events to become successful again for official concerts they need to bring back high quality events that you can only see once.