We always proceed with caution when describing something – anything – with the word “epic”. Be it a movie, a comic book, a current event, a piece of history, and yes, even an online video game, it’s quite rare for us to use this term unless we think it’s justified.
But when we were brainstorming about how to write this blog post on how many people are playing Fortnite, that particular word came up a lot. We will try our best to illustrate how and why with the following points.
For starters, Fortnite was created by a company called Epic Games (hah!) in 2017. So there’s the literal application down pat. But on a more serious (and less literal) note, it’s pretty impressive to discover how popular is Fortnite when presented with actual numbers. So without further ado, let’s examine them closely.
How Many In Concurrent Players?
Epic Games released a January 2018 report that it already had around two million concurrent players (a year after its launch), which then ballooned within just a month to almost three and a half million. With further expansion around the world, more concurrent players upped the estimated amount, making it to over a whopping 8 million in just the latter part of 2018 alone!
After The First 100 Days of Fortnite’s Availability
As of late 2018, the estimated number of people playing Fortnite was at 200 million players. Impressive, right? But translated into actual earnings, it’s even more awe-inspiring. In the first three days since Fortnite was launched, it already made $1.5 million!
Fast-forward to a hundred days after Fortnite became widely available, Epic Games reported that there were already nearly 45 million players by mid-January, 2018. And since Fortnite is also available on various platforms, this figure has risen significantly as months went by. Let’s investigate just how, when, why, and where this happened.
How Many Players Per Month (On Different Platforms)?
To know how many people play Fortnite in a single month, we must first have to take a closer look at how much time an average Fortnite player spends on the game in a certain length of time among particular groups of people.
Fortnite seems to be the most popular among players within the 18 to 24-year-old age group, making up 60% of the entire estimated Fortnite players all over the world. A Fortnite player can spend an average of 22 minutes for each playtime – we are not even factoring in those who have made this practically a way of life yet. (That might be a good topic for a later blog post, actually.)
In its launch month alone, Fortnite players across different platforms already numbered to over 20 million. But statistics (tallied as recently as the previous year’s mid to last quarters) further breaks down the numbers of downloads, dates, and revenues with the following figures:
- Since Fortnite was released on Nintendo Switch in June 2018, it has been downloaded an estimated 12 million times;
- Since Fortnite became available on Android in August 2018, it has seen around $60 million in revenue with an estimated 15 million players;
- Since Fortnite was launched for iOS in March 2018, it has been downloaded nearly 83 million times and has an estimated 11 million players;
- Fortnite earned an estimated $15 million from the App Store only 20 days after Fortnite became available on iOS;
- Fortnite became an iTunes chart-topper in 13 countries as early as March 2018;
- There has been a 500% increase in player count since Fortnite was launched.
So just how popular is Fortnite? The numbers mentioned above make it pretty obvious – it’s surpassed even PlayerUnknown’s BattleGrounds (PUBG) records which shows an average of a still-impressive 800,000 concurrent players!
But all the stats combined above for Fortnite made it possible for the people behind it to enjoy a whopping $100 million in mobile platform earnings alone – all within three months! Add to that the consistent stream of revenue from various platforms and with more players willing to shell out money for the game, plus further plans of expansion in even more countries, and we’re looking at a virtual gold mine here.
But beyond the stats, Fortnite has proven itself to be such a popular game that people have gone beyond playing it – well into picking up dance moves, referencing them in pop culture, cosplaying characters and skins, and even sparking debates among players about certain aspects of the game. Then there are the in-game purchases that amount to more than a billion dollars; not to mention the staggering amount of YouTube Fortnite streaming subscribers pegged at around 16 million viewers.
So on that note, Fortnite is – dare we say it? – truly epic. Have you boarded the bus yet?
