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.

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.

During the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic in April 2020 when many people were stuck at home, gamers turned to their favorite pastime to help them through lockdown. To capitalize on this captive audience, the popular battle royale game Fortnite collaborated with U.S. rapper Travis Scott to put on a live event within the game. This series of five events, named Fortnite: Astronomical, featured various songs from the artist, as well as a world preview song. During the first live show, a peak of 12.3 million players participated in the event, marking an all-time record for the game.

Battle royale game Fortnite has hosted several high-profile in-game events which have drawn millions of players worldwide and are also immensely popular on streaming platforms. In December 2023, Fortnite hosted an in-game Eminem concert as part of its Big Bang Event, the finale of the then-ending OG season. The concert was a success, peaking at 3 million concurrent streaming viewers.

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.

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.

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.

Kyle Giersdorf, more commonly known by his gamertag Bugha, was the most successful Fortnite player in the United States based on prize money earnings as of January 2025. Giersdorf's total career earnings through Fortnite, as of that month, exceeded 3.7 million U.S. dollars. Meanwhile, Harrison Chang aka psalm came in second place with total career earnings amounting to around 1.87 million U.S. dollars. eSports tournament prize pools Professional eSports players can earn up to millions of dollars in prize money at international competitions. As of the year-end 2024, the Dota 2 championships had amassed the highest cumulative prize pool from eSports games worldwide. The International, which is a Dota 2 tournament, was the most lucrative eSports tournament worldwide, with the winners of the 2021 iteration of The International walking away with approximately 40 million U.S. dollars. Popular battle royale games Battle royale games are multiplayer games which combine aspects of free-for-all or team-based shooters with components from survival games, such as having to scavenge for equipment within a hostile open-world environment. As of January 2025, Fortnite was the most popular PlayStation 5 game based on monthly active users worldwide, ranking above entries such as Call of Duty and Grand Theft Auto V. When it came to the most streamed battle royale games worldwide Fortnite also took the top spot, surpassing Apex Legends and Call of Duty: Warzone, which racked up 4.7 million weekly viewer hours in March 2025.

In June 2024, Fortnite was the top battle royale title across Twitch, with approximately 74,450 average concurrent viewers. Apex Legends, which is published by Electronic Arts, was ranked second with 29,246 ACV during the measured period. Twitch accounted for the majority of the live-streaming audiences of both titles.

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 786,821 peak concurrent players in the last recorded month, January 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.

In January 2025, video streaming platform Twitch had approximately 7.7 million active streamers, down from a peak of 9.89 million in January 2021. The platform experienced a boom during the COVID-19 pandemic, when many new users used the platform to connect with friends or try their hand at livestreaming. However, this trend normalized again towards the end of the year, and the streaming space has also grown more competitive as platforms apart from Twitch have evolved to attract streamers and viewers. Popular content categories on Twitch In 2024, most of the leading content categories on Twitch were all gaming-related – except for the top spot: Just Chatting. The general conversation category accumulated 2.8 billion hours of viewing time in the measured period. In October 2023, global Twitch audiences spent around 253 million hours watching Just Chatting content on Twitch, with the average viewer count of such content reaching 347 thousand. KaiCenat was the most popular Just Chatting streamer on Twitch in the most recently measured month. Game streamers Twitch is very popular with gamers and gaming audiences, and the ranking of the most popular Twitch streamers reflects this. Ninja (real name: Richard Tyler Blevins), the top-ranked streamer on Twitch, had 19.14 million followers in December 2024. Ninja saw a meteoric rise to fame when he was one of the first top-ranked players to stream the then-newly released Fortnite Battle Royale at the end of 2017. Second-ranked ibai (real name: Ibai Llanos Garatea) was ranked second with 17.19 million followers on Twitch. With more than 9.4 million followers, Imane Anys, better known as Pokimane, was the only woman among the most-followed Twitch streamers worldwide. Overall, women only accounted for nine percent of the top-ranked Twitch channels.

Roblox was the most popular video game on TikTok in 2024, accumulating 13.26 billion views on Roblox-related video content. Meanwhile, Fortnite was the second-most popular game on the platform, with 10.76 billion video views. Trending games on TikTok With its high user engagement that can make or break careers, TikTok is a popular indicator of what will become popular in certain entertainment and culture sectors. It comes as no surprise that the trending games on TikTok are a mix of current blockbuster releases as well as multiplayer audience favorites. A January 2024 survey of mobile gamers in the U.S. and Canada found that 39 percent of respondents used TikTok to discover and discuss mobile games. Currently, Twitch is the most prolific streaming platform for video gaming content. The most popular video game releases generated millions of watch time hours on their release day, with Black Myth: Wukong ranking first among 2024 video game releases with nearly 5.6 hours of watch time on its launch. Streaming video games on TikTok TikTok also enables users to live-stream content, and creators can also stream video games, specifically. According to TikTok, gaming creators can use TikTok’s own tool, LIVE Studio, to start streaming content once they reach certain qualifying milestones with their accounts. TikTok Live is a growing competitor to Twitch and YouTube Live, with mobile titles such as PUBG Mobile, Mobile Legends: Bang Bang, and Garena Free Fire consistently ranking among the most popular games being live-streamed on the platform.

The eSport tournament that has offered the greatest overall prize pool as of December 2024 was ‘The International 2021’, with a total prize pool of over 40 million U.S. dollars. The most recent edition of the Dota 2 eSports tournament, ‘The International’, took place in Denmark in September 2024. Previous iterations of ‘The International’ have consistently offered the greatest prize pool in each respective year and, as such, constitute the top seven eSports tournaments within this ranking. The International ‘The International’ was originally organized as a promotional event for the release of Dota 2 and has subsequently been held each year with a growing prize pool, contributed primarily by crowdfunding sources. Players are offered the opportunity to purchase a form of battle pass known as a ‘Compendium’ that offers additional content within the game, with a quarter of the revenue generated through ‘Compendium’ sales directly contributing to the prize pool. Online streaming platforms The popularity of both eSports as an entity and, by extension, eSports events, is largely driven by the growing availability of online streaming platforms, such as Youtube and Twitch. This allows a variety of eSports organizations and personnel to offer a range of live commentary, retrospective analysis, match predictions, and player interviews, both independently and in cooperation with eSports events. Twitch, for example, has hosted live streams of the ‘League of Legends World Championship’ since 2012, and ‘The International’ since 2013, with multiple streams available in a range of different languages.

As of December 2024, ninja (real name: Richard Tyler Blevins) was the most followed live streamer on Twitch with over 19.14 million followers. Ninja saw a meteoric rise to fame when he was one of the first top-ranked players to stream the then newly released Fortnite Battle Royale at the end of 2017 and beginning of 2018. Spanish streamer ibai (real name: Ibai Llanos Garatea) was ranked second with 17.19 million followers on Twitch. The top games on Twitch Despite being released way back in 2013, GTA V is still among the most popular games on Twitch. The action adventure classic accounted for 5.2 percent of total hours watched on the platform in November 2024. In contrast, the most popular game on Twitch in terms of average number of channels was Fortnite - the battle royale title had 5,819 channels streaming the game in June 2024. Other top-ranked games include Valorant, Apex Legends, and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II. Twitch - how it all began Founded in 2011, Twitch was initially launched as a spin-off of the general-interest streaming platform Justin.tv. The site primarily focuses on video gaming, including play through of video games, broadcasts of e-sports competitions, and more recently, creative content. Twitch Creative, the outlet for creative content, was launched on October 28, 2015. The launch included a marathon of Bob Ross ' "The Joy of Painting". Some of the most popular channels on Twitch are owned by YouTube gaming personalities, who are taking advantage of the website’s live-streaming capabilities to interact more with their audiences. Users are able to participate in a live chat during the video broadcast, with broadcasters frequently reacting to and replying to comments and questions from the chat in real time. In August 2014, Twitch was acquired by Amazon for 970 million U.S. dollars. It was the company’s fifth most expensive acquisition of all time.

Team Liquid is a professional eSports team founded in the Netherlands in 2000. The team primarily plays in Dota 2 eSports tournaments, with its total prize money won throughout its existence exceeding 31 million U.S dollars. However, the most successful Dota 2 eSports team as of December 2024 is OG, having amassed total winnings of over 37 million U.S. dollars through eSports tournaments. OG is also home to the most successful Dota 2 player of all time, N0tail. Who are the most successful Dota 2 heroes? Defense of the Ancients 2, better known as Dota 2, is a free-to-play multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) game which was launched for PC in 2013. In the game, players control characters, known as heroes, with unique skillsets and collaborate to attack a structure called the Ancient within their enemies’ homebase. From among the 124 playable characters to choose from, Zeus was the leading Dota 2 hero based on their kills/deaths/assists (KDA) ratio in the 12 months preceding August 2024. Meanwhile, Abaddon was the leading Dota 2 hero according to win rate, scoring a slightly higher victory percentage than the second placed hero Wraith King. Looking at popularity, Pudge was the Dota 2 hero with the most matches, having been selected in more than 75 million games during the aforementioned time period. How many people stream games on Twitch? Twitch is a live-streaming platform that offers gaming video content, among other forms of online entertainment, to millions of fans worldwide. As of October 2024, there were nearly 6.91 million active Twitch streamers worldwide, although this figure had been experiencing a downward trend since February of that year. As of December 2024, Richard Tyler Blevins was the most followed live streamer on Twitch globally, with close to 19 million fans subscribing to watch his content online. Being a professional gamer himself, Blevins plays and streams under the alias “ninja”, with some of his most famous content being centered around the battle royale videogame Fortnite. As of December 2024, Fortnite was the most popular game on Twitch by hours streamed.