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.

Registered Users: The Numbers Behind Gaming's Biggest Platforms

The scale of today's gaming platforms is staggering. Roblox projects 8.6 billion accounts by 2025—exceeding Earth's population of 8.2 billion—while Fortnite reached 650 million registered users in 2023.

Raw registration numbers tell only part of the story. Roblox users show deeper platform engagement, spending an average of 2.5 hours daily within its ecosystem. Fortnite's growth from 20 million users in 2017 to 650 million in 2023 reflects a more measured but consistent expansion.

Both platforms face similar challenges with account duplication and inactive users. For a clearer picture of true popularity, daily active user (DAU) metrics provide better insight: Roblox maintains 88.9 million daily active players, while Fortnite shows more seasonal fluctuations in its daily engagement patterns.

Fortnite is an online battle royale video game developed by Epic Games and released in 2017. Fortnite events on the video streaming service Twitch were watched by an average of 49,000 viewers in June 2025. Engagement with the game spiked after the re-release of the original map in November 2023 as part of the OG season, as well as the launch of Lego Fortnite in December 2023.

Fortnite's gender demographics show that 28.5% of players are female, while 71.5% are male, highlighting a predominantly male player base in the popular game.

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.

As of June 2020, battle royale star Fortnite had approximately 80.4 million monthly active users worldwide. This is up from 78.3 million MAU in September 2018. The cross-platform title which was released in July 2017 has been popular right from the start and reported 350 million registered users worldwide in 2020.

Since its release in 2017, Fortnite has become one of the most popular games in the world. The Battle Royale game, in which up to 100 players fight it out at one time until one player is left standing, generated revenue of *** U.S. dollars in December 2019, more an increase of *** million U.S. dollars compared to the precious month.

Fortnite – the money maker With *** million users registered worldwide in early 2020, it is no wonder that Fortnite is making its developers, Epic Games, a lot of money. The game has found the most success in the United States, where it generated a staggering ** million U.S. dollars in its first year after release. Given the nature of the game and the trend in gaming as a whole, it will come as no shock that the vast majority of Fortnite players in the United States were male, with over ** percent falling into the 18-34 age category.

In-game purchases key to success Given that Fortnite is a free-to-play game, how does it generate such a vast amount of revenue? The answer lies, as with many other commercially successful free-to-play games, in in-game purchases. According to a survey carried out in the United States in February 2020, about 77 percent of Fortnite players admitted to making in-game purchases. Using their hard-earned cash to purchase V-Bucks, gamers then use the game’s currency to buy upgrades ranging from outfits and characters to gliders. What’s more, almost ** percent of U.S. Fortnite players confessed to spending money on emotes, which allow their character to celebrate their kills and victories with elaborate dance moves.

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.

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 944,484 peak concurrent players in the last recorded month, July 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.

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.

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.

Since its release in 2017, Fortnite has become one of the most popular games in the world. The battle royale game, in which up to 100 players fight it out at one time until one player is left standing, generated revenue of 3.7 billion U.S. dollars in 2019, down from 5.4 billion U.S. dollars in 2018.

The 2019 World Cup finals remained the top Fortnite tournament of all time, with a peak viewership of 2.33 million viewers. Most of the most viewed Fortnite eSports tournaments were from the game's early years of popularity. However, some more recent tournaments such as the FNCS 2024 Global Championship in September 2024 still managed to crack the top charts.

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.

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.

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.

While the number of daily active users of the iOS Fortnite app in Sweden declined shortly after the coronavirus outbreak, the amount significantly grew from the end of March 2020. According to Airnow, the popular battle royal gaming app exceeded ******* daily active users in the Scandinavian country on May 1 and increased further. The first coronavirus case in Sweden was confirmed on February 4, 2020, but only since the beginning of March, the number considerably increased.

Based on a ranking of the all-time prize money earned by the leading eSports players in Fortnite from Finland, BELAEU (the gamer tag of Lassi Kallio) outperformed all other players earning a total of 180.56 thousand U.S. dollars as of September 2023. Fortnite on Twitch The popularity of Fortnite on the streaming platform Twitch waxed and waned greatly throughout the months between January 2018 and July 2024. The highest peak occurred in July 2018, with over 205 thousand viewers. Since then, the viewership of Fortnite events has oscillated between around 70 thousand and 160 thousand on average. Prize money in eSports Fortnite tournaments had a cumulative prize pool of approximately 20 million U.S. dollars in 2023 — the fourth largest in that year. The leader of the ranking that year was DOTA 2, with an impressive 30.82 million U.S. dollars in prizes, followed by Counter-Strike: Global Offensive and PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds (PUBG) Mobile.

The inaugural Fortnite World Cup took place in 2019, with the final taking place at the Arthur Ashe Stadium in New York in July 2019. The finals were streamed across the official Fortnite channels on Twitch and YouTube, with viewers watching a total of **** million hours. The latest installment of the FNCS 2024 Global Championships took place in Forth Worth in the U.S. and claimed a total of **** million hours of watch time. The 2025 edition of the Fortnite Global Championships (FNCS 2025) is set to take place in Lyon-Décines, France, in September 2025. Despite its popularity, Fortnite struggled with hosting world championships after its inaugural event, as the COVID-19 pandemic impacted offline competitive gaming events between 2020 and 2022. With the Fortnite Championship Series (FNCS) finals every September, publisher Epic Games seems to have found a workable solution.