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.

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.

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 340 U.S. dollars in December 2019, more an increase of 150 million U.S. dollars compared to the precious month.

Fortnite – the money maker With 350 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 75 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 85 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 10 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.

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.

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 November 2023, battle royale title Fortnite launched the OG season, taking players back to the original Chapter 1 map and re-introducing various in-game items from the earliest seasons of the game. The nostalgia was strong in this one, and Fortnite players on Xbox and PlayStation consoles spent nearly 1.48 billion hours on the online title in November 2023, up by 146 percent from the hours spent on Fortnite in the preceding month.

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.

The top earner from Norway in the battle royal video game Fortnite was Emil Bergquist Pedersen, going by the gamer tag Nyhrox. As of January 2025, he has earned over 1.5 million U.S. dollars in professional tournaments. In second place was MrSavage, Martin Foss, who earned roughly 534,000 U.S. dollars' worth of prize money. Epic Games developed the survival and royale battle video game Fortnite in 2017. The different game mode versions are available not only for computers and consoles, but also for handheld and mobile devices.

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 statistic presents data on the share of Fortnite players who also play other selected gaming franchises worldwide as of 3rd quarter 2018. According to the source, 44 percent of Fortnite players worldwide had also played FIFA in the last 12 months.

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 70,000 viewers in February 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.

First released in 2017 and developed by Epic Games, Fortnite is an online battle royal video game with the objective of being the last survivor and eliminating other opposing players. Following the success of the game, a mobile version was released for Android and iOS the following year. Thanks to in-app purchases and micro-transactions, the app generated revenue of 44.3 million U.S. dollars through player spending worldwide in April 2020. This sharp growth in players is no doubt in part due to the coronavirus pandemic, which spread across the world at the beginning of 2020 and led to many people turning to gaming and other forms of indoor entertainment during periods of lockdown.

Based on a ranking of the all-time prize money earned by the leading eSports players in Fortnite from the Netherlands, Rojo, the gamer tag of Dave Jong, outperformed all other players earning a total of over 1.2 million U.S. dollars. Mitr0, the gamer tag of Dmitri Van de Vrie, came second in the ranking with an earning total of approximately 830 thousand U.S. dollars as of January 2025. Fortnite on Twitch The popularity of Fortnite on the streaming platform Twitch waxed and waned greatly throughout the months between January of 2018 and February 2025. The highest peak occurred in July of 2018, with over 205,000 viewers. Since then, the viewership of Fortnite events have decreased overall. Prizemoney in eSports Fortnite tournaments had a cumulative prize pool of approximately 12.27 million U.S. dollars in 2024 – the fourth-largest among all major eSports disciplines in that year. The leader of the ranking that year was Dota 2, with an impressive 23.86 million U.S. dollars in prizes. It was followed by Counter-Strike 2 at over 20.8 million U.S. dollars.

The top earner in the battle royale video game Fortnite from Denmark was the gamer tag Anas. He earned over 1.6 million U.S. dollars in professional Fortnite tournaments in the period from February 2018 to January 2025. In second place came Th0masHD, Thomas Høxbro Davidsen, who earned roughly 1.3 million U.S. dollars' worth of prize money. Epic Games developed the survival and royale battle video game Fortnite in 2017. The different game mode versions are available not only for computers and consoles, but also for handheld and mobile devices.

In 2024, gaming company Fortnite reported around 70,000 developers or creators in Fortnite’s creator ecosystem, nearly tripling from 24,000 creators in the previous year. The total annual Fortnite creator payout in 2024 amounted to 352 million U.S. dollars.

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.

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.

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.

Thanks to his second place finish at the Fortnite World Cup Finals in 2019, Jaden Ashman, also known as Wolfiez, is the highest earning Fortnite player from the United Kingdom as of January 2025. Ashman's earnings from the game reaching 1.37 million U.S. dollars, making him the only player based in the UK to hit the six-figure mark for career earnings.