Fortnite is introducing 5-player teams for its South Park collab, but lead suggests it could become permanent: "Make it successful then we'll talk"

South Park characters in Fortnite.

Epic Games has announced that five player teams will be included in the game as a limited time mode to coincide with the South Park collab.

After teasing the collab earlier this week, Epic Games unveiled that South Park will be joining Fortnite on January 9, 2026. The announcement was joined by an animated short by the South Park team showing the main four boys playing the game and leaving poor Butters out of the game, before he appeared as his supervillain alter ego Professor Chaos with The Stick of Truth (of South Park: The Stick of Truth fame). This then teleported the five boys into Fortnite with mech suits, with the Imaginationland balloon taking over the Battle Bus, the Stick of Truth and Cheesy Poofs as in-game items, and a Cartman Land POI.

However, the big news was actually only teased in the trailer, and confirmed in the description. Fortnite is adding "Quints," a five-player team mode to the game alongside this South Park collab (presumably because they were also sad seeing Butters being left out). The text reads, "Channel Cartman, Kenny, Stan, Kyle, and Butters with their Outfits in the Shop and get rewarded with items from the free Born in Chaos Pass! Don't forget to explore Cartmanland and jump into the new Quints 5-person playlist. Live Friday until February 5."

Fortnite design director Ted Timmins explains the mode was added "because every squad has their 'Butters.'"

So at the moment, Quints is only a limited time mode until next month, however, a fan asks Timmins, "If it's a successful mode, can we keep it forever please," to which Timmins responds: "Make it successful then we'll talk."

Of course, this adds yet another two layers to the Battle Royale experience as now players will be split across five versions of the game mode depending on team size, and that's doubled with Zero Build – and then there's the litany of other modes on top of that. I personally like the idea of Quints, but I could see it becoming an issue if the playerbase isn't there, but let's hope that's not the case, because more options are always great.

Fortnite Chapter 7 was designed to take the game "back to its battle royale roots," even though it didn't actually start as one, and one lead is "both in awe and hugely proud of this team"