How many people play Fortnite? After bursting onto the scene in 2017, Fortnite has since become a worldwide phenomenon, amassing 650 million players across the globe as of November 2023, up from 400 million in May 2021. Why is Fortnite so popular? The reasons Fortnite has become such a global hit are clear. Not only is the game free to play, but it is also available on most gaming platforms. On top of this, Fortnite's most popular gameplay mode is the battle royale mode, in which up to 100 players fight it at once. This means that the re-playability of the game is infinite – each game is unique. Keeping players engaged with live services Fortnite Battle Royale is also a live service game, meaning that the game receives regular content updates to keep players engaged. Each season of the game roughly lasts 10 weeks and features events such as online concerts, and cosmetic changes. The game’s current iteration is called "鬼HUNTERS (Demon HUNTERS)" with a theme around yōkai, hunters and Japanese culture. Live service games are here to stay By offering cross-platform, multiplayer gaming with a live service schedule, Fortnite covers two of the biggest gaming industry trends, which the majority of the industry intend to follow. A 2023 of global gaming studios found that more than nine in ten studios were either working on or intending to release a live services title. With regular, cadenced, and themed updates to free-to-play games, studios motivate players to keep returning and, eventually, spend not only time but also money on the game. This seems to work for the parent company Epic Games – Fortnite was one of the most downloaded PlayStation F2P game in the EU and North America in 2024.

Having burst onto the scene in 2017, Fortnite has since become a worldwide phenomenon, amassing almost 250 million players across the globe as of March 2019. Having first been released in July 2017, the battle royale game took just two weeks to reach 10 million players, a figure which doubled to 20 million players after only six weeks. In less than a year, the game had acquired a staggering 125 million players.

Battle royale game Fortnite has hosted several high-profile in-game events which have drawn millions of players worldwide. The Galactus event, which concluded Fortnite's Marvel-themed season 4 of chapter 2 in November 2020, drew 15.3 million concurrent players and still holds the record to date. In November 2024, Remix: The Finale event set the record for a Fortnite in-game concert, attracting 14.3 million players. Additionally, while not a concert or a special event, the launch of Fortnite OG, featuring the game's original map, in November 2023, was the most successful day for the battle royale title, drawing over 44 million players in a day.

Apex Legends became an instant hit on its release in February 2019. Despite the growth in players slowing down in the months after the game's initial release, Apex Legends crossed 170 million players life-to-date as of October 2024. Apex Legends popular among eSports fans Apex Legends is a battle royale game which pits up to 20 three-person squads against each other in a fight to the death an island. While the game evidently has millions of devoted players, many more experience the game through some of their favorite eSports players. The Respawn Entertainment game is consistently one of the top games streamed on Twitch, with Apex Legends viewers watching in their thousands to see teams battle it out. In June 2024, approximately 7 million hours of Apex Legends were watched on major livestreaming platorms worldwide, making it one of the most popular games on Twitch and illustrating its appeal to both players and viewers alike. The rise of battle royale Battle royale games often include hundreds of players competing against each other at one time and this large-scale game mode has become increasingly popular in recent years thanks to the success of games such as Fortnite and PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds (PUBG). While many of the games are free to play, players can invest money on in-game purchases, which include upgrades to characters and players. Indeed, player spending in battle royale games often runs into the thousands and spending on PUBG Mobile even surpassed the 1.6 billion U.S. dollar mark in September 2020.

The number of daily active users of the iOS Fortnite app increased significantly after the implementation of Norway's shutdown in March 2020 due to the coronavirus outbreak. According to Airnow, the user amount peaked at roughly 54 thousand on May 23. By comparison, in the beginning of March, half as many people played the royal battle gaming app on a daily basis.

Action role-playing game Black Myth: Wukong topped the 2024 list for peak number of concurrent players on the online gaming platform Steam, with 2.4 million peak concurrent players. The action-adventure game Palworld, which was released in January 2024, was ranked second. Is Steam keeping pace with the console giants? The fight for supremacy between PC and console gamers is an eternal one. However, it seems that Steam, the main online PC gaming platform, can still keep up with the console giants. In January 2023, Steam registered a record 33 million simultaneous users at peak time, impressive considering the figure stood at 27.4 million just two years before. One of the main advantages of Steam is the staggering library of games available to users, and it appears that players are not afraid of splashing the cash to play their favorite games.   Battle of the Battle Royale games While PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds reigns supreme in the Steam universe, it has stiff competition in the form of its battle royale brother, Fortnite. First released in July 2017, and not available on Steam, free-to-play Fortnite very quickly amassed millions of players and soon became a worldwide hit. Having scooped the award for Best Multiplayer Game at The Game Awards 2018, Epic Games’ smash hit shows no signs of slowing down. But with new players, such as Apex Legends, constantly entering the game, will Fortnite and PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds be able to hold on to their loyal fan bases?

According to a February 2020 survey of Fortnite gamers in the United States, 34 percent of respondents played Fortnite roughly six to ten hours per week, while five percent admitted to playing for 21 weekly hours or more.

First released at the start of 2017, PUBG: Battlegrounds (previously known as PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds) is one of the most popular games on Steam and had 861,598 peak concurrent players in the last recorded month, April 2025. The highest number of concurrent players was recorded in January 2018 at 3.24 million. One of the biggest games on Steam PUBG gained a devoted legion of fans in a short space of time after its release, and cumulative unit sales of the game hit 75 million in December 2021. The game has also been critically acclaimed — it won the Best Multiplayer Game at The Game Awards in 2017 and its free-to-play mobile version for Android and iOS, released in 2018, was nominated for Best Mobile Game at The 2018 Game Awards. This critical success has also translated into commercial success, as the game generated millions of U.S. dollars of revenue, most successfully in the United States. On January 12, 2022, the game has become free to play. Battle of the Battle Royale games PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds is an online battle royale game in which up to 100 hundred players battle it out until there is only one player or one team left standing. This format of game has become very popular in recent years. While PUBG has a strong following, especially on Steam, it has come under pressure from rival battle royale game, Fortnite. First released just several months after PUBG, Fortnite has since become a cultural phenomenon, amassing 500 million registered users in just six years. As of 2025, both PUB and Fortnite are still going strong with their loyal audiences.

According to a February 2020 survey of Fortnite gamers in the United States, respondents had spent an average of 102.42 U.S. dollars on in-game purchases. Overall, about 77 percent of responding Fortnite audiences had spent money on the free-to-play title.

First released in 2017, the battle royale game Fortnite has become popular with audiences worldwide. The game also has a sizeable eSports segment, and Kyle Giersdorf, also known as Bugha, is the most successful Fortnite eSports player with lifetime earnings from the game of 3.73 million U.S. dollars. Second-ranked David Wang, also known as Aqua, has accumulated about 2.19 million U.S. dollars in winnings from the game.

In March 2025, Fortnite was the top battle royale title across Twitch with more than 12 million weekly viewer hours. Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare, which was published by Activision Blizzard, was ranked third with 4.7 million viewership hours during the measured period.

In 2022, the multi-platform free-to-play (F2P) gaming title Fortnite generated an estimated 4.4 billion U.S. dollars in annual revenues. This figure decreased from the previous year when the battle royale title made about 4.8 billion U.S. dollars in revenues.

In 2024, video game publisher and software developer Epic Games is projected to generate approximately 5.8 billion U.S. dollars in gross revenues, up from 5.1 billion U.S. dollars in 2020.

How does Epic Games make money? Epic Games' gross does not only include game revenue from the company battle royale hit Fortnite, but also engine revenue derived from game licenses and royalties, as well as Unreal Engine assets. Epic is the developer of the gaming engine Unreal Engine, which is currently monetized under a royalty model, meaning that is can be downloaded for free and Epic claims a percentage of sales revenue. Currently, Epic is not claiming a fee for developers that publish their games on the Epic Games Store. The Epic Games Store (EGS) was launched in December 2018. In May 2020, Epic announced that their share of royalties for games developed in Unreal Engine are waived until developers have earned their first 1 million U.S. dollars in revenue. Other income streams of the company include Epic Games Store revenue, and Merchandise and other revenue. Epic Games Store upsetting the industry standard One of the biggest headlines regarding the launch of Epic’s own digital storefront was the company’s attitude to developer / store revenue split. Gaming stores and app platforms including Valve’s Steam, the Apple App Store, or Google Play, usually take a 30 percent commission cut from game sales and in-game revenues. The Epic Games Store was released with the announcement that the EGS would only claim 12 percent of revenue, leaving 88 percent to the developers. This approach, as well as Epic’s attempt to circumvent Apple’s monetization strategies in the iOS app of Fortnite, has made many headlines, led to Apple removing the app from its App Store, and resulted in the still ongoing lawsuit Epic vs. Apple.

In January 2025, Fortnite still was one of the most popular video games across the world, ranking first among the most popular PlayStation 5 titles worldwide based on monthly active users. First-person-shooter Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II/Warzone 2.0 placed second.

The eSports game with the greatest tournament prize pool between January and June 2025 was Dota 2, recording a cumulative prize pool valued at 6.84 million U.S. dollars. This cumulative prize pool was significantly higher than the runner-up, Counter-Strike 2, which had a cumulative prize pool of 4.9 million U.S. dollars during this period. Dota 2 Dota 2 is a multiplayer online battle arena video game (MOBA) developed by Valve Software as a follow-up to 'Defense of the Ancients,' a community-created mod for the game 'Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos.' In an effort to grow the popularity of DOTA 2 amongst ‘Defense of the Ancients’ players and to further promote the release of DOTA 2, the development company invited 16 of the world’s leading ‘Defense of the Ancients’ players to participate in a ‘DOTA 2’ tournament, an event that would eventually be held annually. It is this annual event, now referred to as ‘The International’, that offers such a substantial tournament prize pool and results in DOTA 2 consistently offering the greatest cumulative prize pool of any eSports game. eSports overview Whilst competitions have long since been a component of the video gaming industry, it wasn’t until relatively recently that eSports as a professional form of competitive video game play grew in popularity, with video game developers often organizing and funding many of the most popular eSport tournaments, which involve games such as League of Legends, Dota 2, Counter-Strike, Valorant, Overwatch, Street Fighter, Super Smash Bros., and StarCraft. These tournaments often incorporate either multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA), first-person shooter (FPS), combat, card, battle royale, and real-time strategy (RTS) games. The most prominent types of video games associated with eSport tournaments include multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA), first-person shooter (FPS), fighting, card, battle royale and real-time strategy (RTS) games.

Published by Activision, Call of Duty (CoD) is a popular first person shooter video game series which first launched in 2003. The most successful game in the franchise is Call of Duty: Black Ops, which has sold over 30 million units worldwide since it was first released in 2010.

The continued success of CoD While the franchise was originally created exclusively for Windows, later versions were made available for numerous other platforms, including Xbox, PlayStation, Nintendo, and OS X. In 2020, Activision branched out even further and released Call of Duty: Warzone, a free-to-play online battle royale game which pits up to 150 players against each other at one time. Within two months of its release, Warzone had amassed 60 million players across the globe, rivaling some of the other battle royale giants on the market, including Fortnite and PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds.

Call of Duty goes mobile Although Call of Duty is traditionally seen as a console game, the mobile edition has also been a great success. In the first few months after its release in October 2019, the game amassed 250 million downloads worldwide, far eclipsing the respective downloads of its shooter rivals, PUBG Mobile and Fortnite. The biggest regional market for the mobile game was the United States, where it was downloaded 28.5 million times in the first two months of its release. Indeed, players in the United States spent more than 36 million U.S. dollars combined on in-game purchases within the mobile app in the first two months after the game's release.