Around the beginning of 2017, the Battle Royale video game genre was at its peak. There were times when it seemed like a new Battle Royale game would come out every month, yet Fortnite always seemed to remain at the top. But why? There were plenty of other Battle Royale games out at the time like PUBG or H1Z1. What made Fortnite special? There are a few key factors to Fortnite’s massive success that allowed the game to stay popular for so long. Here I’ll give you a basic rundown on Fortnite’s popularity, downfall, and recent rise back to the top.
In case you haven’t heard of what a Rattle Royale game is, it’s basically where a set number of people drop from the sky onto a large map, picking up weapons and gear to eventually fight until only one player remains. Think of it as like an alternate version of The Hunger Games.
Fortnite: Save the World was initially released back in July of 2017 and was intended to be a zombie PVE (Player Versus Environment) where players defend a base from waves of zombies. This didn’t go over well, so Fortnite’s developer Epic Games took notes from other popular Battle Royale games at the time like PUBG and H1Z1, and released a Battle Royale game mode in late 2017. Little did Epic Games know that this would be perhaps one of the greatest business decisions in the history of gaming.
Fortnite Battle Royale was officially released to the public only 2 months after Save the World on September 26th, 2017. Not even a month into the game’s lifespan, it became a huge hit. Nearly anyone who had access to a computer or console at the time was playing the game, and if they weren’t, they had certainly heard of it.
Epic Games very quickly realized the success of their new Battle Royale game mode, and almost dropped the Save the World project completely. They switched their focus on improving the Battle Royale portion of the game, releasing updates weekly. Weekly updates were almost never seen in video games, and that still holds true today, but Fortnite was different. Every week there would be a new update, adding a brand-new weapon or changing the map in some way. This kept the game fresh and exciting and gave players something to look forward to, as well as incentivizing them to keep playing every week.
These constant updates were incredibly impressive considering Fortnite Battle Royale was a free game. That’s right. Fortnite was completely free to anyone who wished to try it, and this is perhaps the biggest reason Fortnite was and still is, so popular. There were hardly any free games out at the time, of Fortnite’s quality, so this gave it a huge edge over its competitors. There were microtransactions to purchase cosmetics, but these provided zero competitive advantage. This allowed players to customize their character rather than sticking to one generic model.
Fortnite eventually got so popular, Epic Games began collaborating with huge franchises such as Marvel, Star Wars, and celebrities like Ariana Grande. By adding cosmetics from popular media to the game, it brought fans of these series to Fortnite and only grew the player base even more.
Fortnite saw great success for about a year, peaking at over 30 million active players at one time. But all good things must come to an end. It isn’t exactly known when Fortnite began to fall off, and a lot of people will give you a bunch of different answers. My personal experience of Fortnite’s dying was around its 19th season with the release of chapter 3. The game just wasn’t the same anymore. The weapons were unbalanced, the map was crowded and not fun to traverse. But the biggest problem was the overuse of computer-controlled AI’s that nearly ruined the game for a lot of people, myself included.
After Chapter 3, the game continued to lose players. The weapon pool proceeded to become worse and everyone hated the map. Epic Games had to do something to keep players’ attention, and they came up with a genius solution. On October 27th, 2023, Epic Games announced on Twitter that Fortnite would revert to the OG (Original/Old) map, and players were ecstatic. Finally, after nearly 5 years Epic Games was listening to their community and bringing back the old weapons, map, and most importantly removing the AI’s.
The return of OG Fortnite broke the internet. They got a new all-time player count of over 40 million active players and everyone was loving the game. Every problem mentioned before about the loot-pool and map were fixed and the game felt fun again. Unfortunately, this only lasted a month. As this is being written, Fortnite just began their Chapter 5 season with a brand new map and weapons for players to try out. So far, players seem to enjoy it way more than the previous seasons.
Regardless of your opinion on Fortnite, there is no doubt it will go down as one of the greatest video games in history. It’s influence on current and future games releasing is unmatched, and the game will only continue to grow as the years pass.
