Epic Games is officially delaying the release of Fortnite: Battle Royale's planned Playground LTM. The practice mode was originally planned to release alongside the start of Fortnite's 4.5 patch and the return of the 50v50 game mode, but ran into some issues. Epic planned to do some testing on Friday and then enable Playground, but has since decided to delay it for the weekend.

The provided reason for the Playground LTM being disabled is simply its matchmaking, with no further elaboration. The Playground mode is built around providing up to four players in a squad a normal-ish map to play in as they see fit for up to an hour. Cutting back from 100 players to just a single squad must be a tricky matchmaking change, so Epic must be taking precautions to ensure Playground's launch isn't a fiasco.

Epic plans on continuing to test the Playground LTM over the weekend. It will update fans on the mode's status on Monday.

Playground LTM, when it likely launches next week, will provide Epic's first iteration of a practice arena and creative mode for Fortnite players to experiment with. In Playground LTM all treasure chests will spawn, resources will prove more bountiful, llamas will spawn more often, and players will respawn upon death. This should enable a squad of four, with friendly fire enabled, to recreate tactical scenarios and play then out. Or, for the less competitive, Playground allows players to build and experiment as they please.

Epic Games has been promising a practice mode for Fortnite for some time and the Playground LTM is intended to be just the first attempt at that. Playground is just an experiment itself, a partial solution to a larger request from the community. The mode is still limited to just a single hour, limited to a single squad, and still makes players search for all items, weapons, and ammo they want, but it's still going to be more than what was previously available.

Fortnite is currently available on PC, PS4, Xbox One, and mobile devices.