Fortnite, a Battle Royale game that has risen in popularity over the past year and a half. No video game has ever put this many people back in their gaming chairs since the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 Era. The game continues to rise in popularity as there are now over 200 million players as of November.
Fortnite originally launched in July 2017 but the Battle Royale game mode released in September 2017. The game has always been free to play as Epic Games, the developer of Fortnite, made that clear from the start.
Epic Games raked in 126 million in February, $223 million in March and $296 in April. As the game is free to play besides the Save The World mode, how does Fortnite make all this money? The answer is in-game purchases. In-game purchases have increased in popularity ever since the iOS game Angry Birds had big success with them.
“The serious competitive community is really building up too. With the lure of millions in prizes, a lot of players are taking the game more seriously. Anyone can pick up the game and have fun!” said FinallyRage, Fortnite Battle Royale Reddit moderator. Fortnite has made so much money through these in-game purchases throughout the past year that they hosted many tournaments with prize pools equaling up to $100 million. These players are invited to an ESports tournament to compete for these cash prizes.
In Fortnite: Battle Royale, there are multiple purchases a player can make. One of the biggest purchases are skins, pickaxes, gliders and emotes. Skins refer to character styles in game such as their latest merge with the NFL so players can choose their favorite team as a character. Pickaxes are used to harvest material in game to build walls and structures for safety. Gliders are used in game to glide through the air more like a parachute and emotes are dances among all sorts.
As of October 2017, Fortnite introduced the Battle Pass which allows players to level up and get all of these skins, pickaxes, gliders and emotes. The Battle Pass originally was a 70 level tier but changed to 100 level tier after Season 2.
Currently, Fortnite players are in Season 7 of the game. With each season, Fortnite has begun to introduce different themes throughout the game. There have been real life characters, meteors, glowing cubes, and zombies introduced throughout these seven seasons. Reddit is a very popular aspect to the Fortnite community. It is known that a lot of the actual items and ideas that Fortnite develops in the game come from Reddit users.
“There’s always a different aspect to every game and that’s why I believe it is so addicting,”Gerald Healey, junior accounting major, said. “Every chest, every fight you get in to is a different outcome and there is never the exact same outcome like most games.”
Fortnite continues to make changes to their game quickly as updates come out every Thursday that keep the game feeling fresh along with new challenges. Thus being the reason why the game is so addicting to so many people.
“I believe that the game is fun to play in a non serious way and the art style is more family friendly than a lot of other games,” said FinallyRage. “This opens the opportunity for more people to play the game and enjoy their time playing. Epic Games has added a lot of limited time modes that change frequently so as to keep people playing the game.”
Fortnite has recently won Game of the Year at the Golden Joystick Awards over popular titles such as Red Dead Redemption 2 and God of War. The Fortnite community is very large as it has 78.3 million players monthly as of September 2018. It is not hard to see the increase of popularity and players from their initial launch a year ago.
Another aspect that Fortnite has brought to the gaming industry are streamers. Streamers such as Ninja, Dr Lupo, Tfue among others are online entertainers that simply play Fortnite on Twitch. Twitch is a live streaming platform that allows these streamers to interact with their viewers. A lot of viewers watch other streamers to improve their own game and hope to better themselves.
Fortnite has increased in viewers, popularity and players more than any video game has ever in only one year. The future is bright for Fortnite if the developers keep the game feeling fresh and listen to the large community. Season 7 is set to begin December 7th and fans have been asking for a snowy winter map, we’ll see if Epic Games will continue to listen to their community.
