Fortnite

Fortnite
Genre(s)	Survival, battle royale, sandbox
Developer(s)	Epic Games[a]
Publisher(s)	Epic Games[b]
Platform(s)	macOS[c] Windows PlayStation 4 Xbox One iOS[c] Nintendo Switch Android[c] Xbox Series X/S PlayStation 5
First release	Fortnite: Save the World July 25, 2017 (early access)
Latest release	Fortnite Ballistic December 11, 2024 (early access)

Fortnite is an online video game and game platform developed by Epic Games and released in 2017. It is available in seven distinct game mode versions that otherwise share the same general gameplay and game engine: Fortnite Battle Royale, a free-to-play battle royale game in which up to 100 players fight to be the last person standing; Fortnite: Save the World, a cooperative hybrid tower defense-shooter and survival game in which up to four players fight off zombie-like creatures and defend objects with traps and fortifications they can build; Fortnite Creative, in which players are given complete freedom to create worlds and battle arenas; Lego Fortnite, an open world game collection divided between survival game Lego Fortnite Odyssey and social game Lego Fortnite Brick Life; Rocket Racing, a racing game; Fortnite Festival, a rhythm game; and Fortnite Ballistic, a tactical first-person shooter currently in early access.

Save the World and Battle Royale were released in 2017 as early access titles, while Creative was released on December 6, 2018. While the Save the World and Creative versions have been successful for Epic Games, Fortnite Battle Royale in particular became an overwhelming success and a cultural phenomenon, drawing more than 125 million players in less than a year, earning hundreds of millions of dollars per month. Fortnite as a whole generated $9 billion in gross revenue up until December 2019, and it has been listed among the greatest games of all time.

Save the World is available for macOS,^[c] PlayStation 4, Windows, and Xbox One, while Battle Royale and Creative were released for all those platforms as well as Android and iOS devices^[c] and Nintendo Switch. The game also launched with the release of the ninth-generation PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S consoles. Furthermore, Lego Fortnite, Rocket Racing, Fortnite Festival, and Fortnite Ballistic are available on all platforms.

Fortnite has multiple game modes, using the same engine; each has similar graphics and art assets. Five of these modes are directly created and managed by Epic Games and its subsidiaries:

• Fortnite: Save the World is a player-versus-environment cooperative game, with four players collaborating towards a common objective on various missions while avoiding the effects of an encroaching cataclysmic storm. The players take the role of commanders of home base shelters, collecting resources, saving survivors, and defending equipment that helps to either collect data on the storm or to push back the storm. From missions, players are awarded a number of in-game items, which include hero characters, weapon and trap schematics, and survivors, all of which can be leveled up through gained experience to improve their attributes.
• Fortnite Battle Royale is a player-versus-player game for up to 100 players, allowing one to play alone, in a duo, or in a squad (usually consisting of three or four players). Weaponless players airdrop from a "Battle Bus" that crosses the game's map, and then scavenge for weapons, items, and resources while trying to stay alive and to attack and eliminate other players. Over the course of a round, the safe area of the map shrinks down in size due to an incoming toxic storm; players outside that threshold take damage and can be eliminated if they fail to quickly evacuate. This forces remaining players into tighter spaces and encourages player encounters until the last player or team is alive. Alongside the main Battle Royale mode, three additional modes are also available: Zero Build, which removes building elements, Reload, which allows players to respawn after dying for a set amount of time, and OG, which re-introduces the classic Chapter 1 map and weapons. Furthermore, "Party Royale" served as a social space, which hosted various concert events.
• Lego Fortnite is a platform for Lego-based games. The platform includes Odyssey, a survival sandbox game, where players play as Lego Minifig versions of characters, as they collect materials, build various buildings, craft various weapons and tools and fight against monsters; and Brick Life, a social-based game designed as an age-appropriate Grand Theft Auto game. ^[4]
• Rocket Racing is a racing game, developed by Psyonix and serving as a spin-off title to Rocket League. Players race vehicles, gaining speed boosts from special lanes sections or by drifting, as well as the ability to jump and racing on vertical and inverted surfaces, while avoiding obstacles on the course.
• Fortnite Festival is a rhythm game developed by Harmonix, consisting of three modes. In the "Main Stage", players play popular hit songs and original tracks created by Harmonix and the Epic Games Sound Team, hitting notes to the rhythm in the Main Stage on one of the four unique parts: Lead, Guitar/Bass, Drums and Vocals, in a manner similar to Harmonix's Rock Band games, while the "Battle Stage" pits sixteen players to get the highest score and survive each round until one player remains.^[5] In the "Jam Stage", players cooperate to make remixes, similar to Harmonix' Dropmix and Fuser, using any part of any song within Festival mode, in which are also usable in Battle Royale, Creative and Unreal Editor for Fortnite (UEFN).
• Fortnite Ballistic is a five-on-five, round-based tactical shooter, comparable to Counter-Strike and Valorant, to launch in early access on December 11, 2024. One team must plant and protect a rift device while it is charging from the opposing team that seeks to eliminate them and disarm the device. Between rounds, players are able to buy in-game weapons and gear from currency earned in previous rounds. Ballistic is the first Epic-developed game on the Fortnite platform to directly support a first-person view.^[6]

In addition to these modes, Fortnite offers the sandbox mode, Fortnite Creative. Within this mode, players are given complete freedom to spawn any item from the Battle Royale gamemode on a personal island, and can create games such as battle arenas, race courses, platforming challenges, and more. Furthermore, it also supports Unreal Editor for Fortnite (UEFN), which allows players to edit worlds using Fortnite assets. Creative and UEFN also allows players to create custom Fall Guys games which can be accessible within the Fortnite launcher.

All modes except Save the World are free-to-play; Save the World is pay-to-play.^[7] The games are monetized through the use of V-Bucks, in-game currency that can be purchased with real-world funds, but also earned through completing missions and other achievements in Save the World.^[8] In other modes, V-Bucks can be used to buy cosmetic items such as character models or the game's battle pass, a tiered progression of customization rewards for gaining experience and completing certain objectives during the course of a Battle Royale season.^[9][10] The battle pass originally was aimed to support Fortnite Battle Royale, and with the expansion of game modes in 2023, two addition passes were added, the Festival Pass for Fortnite Festival and Lego Pass for Lego Fortnite, each which required progression in those modes to receive rewards. In November and December 2024, Epic changed these mechanics, allowing both of those passes to be progressed through experience points earned in any Fortnite game mode, as well as renaming the Festival Pass to Music Pass. Similarly, the Fortnite Crew, a monthly subscription that paid for the cost of the main battle pass and additional cosmetics, was expanded during the same time to encompass the Music and Lego passes.

All modes of Fortnite are cross-platform play compatible, requiring users to use an Epic Games account for cross-saving between platforms.^[11]

Fortnite began from an internal game jam at Epic Games following the publishing of Gears of War 3 around 2011. Though it was not initially one of the developed titles during the jam, the concept of merging the construction game genre, representing games like Minecraft and Terraria, and shooter games arose, leading to the foundation of Fortnite.^[12][13] Development of Fortnite slowed due to several issues, including switching from the Unreal Engine 3 to Unreal Engine 4, a deeper role-playing game approach to extend the life of the game, and a switch of art style from a dark theme to a more cartoonish style. Further, Epic was looking to get into the games as a service model, and brought in Chinese publisher Tencent to help; Tencent took a large stake in Epic as part of this, leading to the departure of several executives, including Cliff Bleszinski, who had been a key part of Fortnite's development. Fortnite's approach was changed to be Epic's testbed for games as a service, and further slowed the development.^[14][13][15]

Epic was able to prepare to release Fortnite as a paid early access title in July 2017, with plans to release it as free-to-play sometime in 2019 while gaining feedback from players to improve the game.^{[16][17][18][19]} With the release of Fortnite Battle Royale, the player-versus-environment mode was distinguished as "Save the World". Ultimately, Epic opted to release Save the World as a premium title, bringing it out of early access on June 29, 2020.^[20]

Near the same time that Epic released Fortnite into early access, PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds had become a worldwide phenomenon, having sold over 5 million copies three months from its March 2017 release, and drawing strong interest in the battle royale genre. Epic recognized that with the Fortnite base game, they could also do a battle royale mode, and rapidly developed their own version atop Fortnite in about two months.^[21] By September 2017, Epic was ready to release this as a second mode from "Save the World" in the paid-for earlier access, but then later decided to release it as a free game, Fortnite Battle Royale, supported with microtransactions. This version quickly gained players, with over 10 million players during its first two weeks of release, and leading Epic to create separate teams to continue the Fortnite Battle Royale development apart from the Save the World version, outside of common engine elements and art assets.^[22][23] This allowed Fortnite Battle Royale to expand to other platforms otherwise not supported by Save the World, including iOS and Android mobile devices and the Nintendo Switch.^[24][25]

A creative sandbox mode launched on December 6, 2018, synchronized with the start of season 7 of Fortnite Battle Royale. Each player has access to a private, persistent island on which they construct buildings and add and manipulate objects as desired. Players are able to invite friends to this island and participate in unofficial games such as race tracks or jumping courses.^[26] Only players who purchased the battle pass initially received their own island, but a week later, on December 13, players who did not purchase it received access to the game mode for free.^[27]

In March 2023, Epic released the Unreal Editor for Fortnite (UEFN), a standalone editor for Windows. UEFN allows creators to use the Unreal Editor with features of Unreal Engine 5 and Fortnite assets in developing new modes within the Fortnite Creative mode; this mode was called "Creative 2.0".^[28]

In October 2023, Epic redesigned the main Fortnite client to present Epic's own various modes as well as the numerous creative modes as part of Fortnite Experiences, comparable to Roblox in presentation.^[29] This was followed by the introduction of three new Epic-developed modes for the game in December 2023: Lego Fortnite, a survival game developed in conjunction with The Lego Group, Rocket Racing, an arcade-style driving game developed by Psyonix, and Fortnite Festival, a rhythm game developed by Harmonix. Each mode was introduced as free-to-play, interfacing with the game's battle pass system, and offering new rewards associated with those modes.^[30]

Numerous improvements in UEFN were announced in March 2024, including the addition of Unreal Engine's MetaHuman character rendering technology, and more assets from Lego, Rocket Racing, and Fall Guys. Epic also stated their intent to have future Fortnite Battle Royale seasons starting in late 2025 to be developed in UEFN.^[31]

The Save the World mode achieved over one million players by August 2017, just prior to the release of Battle Royale.^[32]

Fortnite Battle Royale became a significant financial success for Epic Games, leading them to separate the teams between Save the World and Battle Royale to provide better support for both modes. Within two weeks of release, over 10 million players had played the mode,^[33] and by June 2018, just after the Nintendo Switch release, had reached 125 million players.^[34] Revenue from Fortnite Battle Royale during the first half of 2018 had been estimated in the hundreds of millions of dollars per month,^[35][36] with total 2018 revenue estimated at $2.4 billion by analysis firm SuperData Research.^[37] Total revenue for Fortnite reached more than $9 billion by the end of 2019.^[38]

Fortnite Battle Royale has also become a cultural phenomenon,^[39] with several celebrities reporting they play the game, and athletes using Fortnite emotes as victory celebrations.^[40] A notable streaming event in March 2018, with streamer Ninja playing Fortnite Battle Royale alongside Drake, Travis Scott, Kim DotCom, and Pittsburgh Steelers wide receiver JuJu Smith-Schuster, broke viewership records for Twitch to date, and led to Epic arranging a Fortnite Battle Royale pro–am with 50 pairs of streamers and professional players matched with celebrities at E3 2018 in June 2018.^[41][42][43] Epic Games has developed organized esports competitions around Fortnite Battle Royale, such as the inaugural US$30 million Fortnite World Cup tournament that took place in July 2019^[44][45] and the Fortnite Championship Series (FNCS), the latter of which would be organized by Epic Games in 2020 and 2021 before being organized by Blast ApS from 2022 onwards.

There has also been growing concern over Fortnite Battle Royale's draw toward young children, emphasized with the release of the mobile client. Parents and teachers had expressed concern that students are being distracted and drawn away from school work due to playing Fortnite.^[46] Concerns have also been raised about the impact that playing a game involving repeated depictions of gun violence may have on young children.^[47][48]

In 2017, the game was nominated for "Best Co-op Game" by PC Gamer,^[49] and for "Best Spectator Game" by IGN.^[50] In 2018, the game won the award for Best Ongoing Game by PC Gamer^[51] and IGN,^[52] the latter of which nominated it for "Best Nintendo Switch Game", "Best Mobile Game", and "Best Action Game".^[53][54][55]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Fortnite.

• Official website
• Fortnite at IMDb