Fortnite Battle Royale hit a record breaking number of players in August
Fortnite Battle Royale has been the most popular video game in the industry for the better part of a year now, and doesn’t look like it’s slowing down anytime soon.
Since launching in September of 2017, Fortnite’s battle royale mode has broken numerous records in the gaming industry, and continues to smash records set by itself too, with a staggering player count in August.
As part of the announcement for the upcoming Fall Skirmish Series, Epic Games revealed that August was their “biggest month yet” in terms of the number of players.
According to the post, almost 80 million players across the six platforms (PC, PS4, Xbox One, iOS, Android and Nintendo Switch) dropped into the island map for a game of Fortnite.
“August was Fortnite’s biggest month yet, with 78.3 million of you showing up to play.”
Epic says that this increased player count exposed a number of technical issues that need to be improved upon, as the already massive player base continues to increase.
“This exposed weak points and allowed us to make targeted improvements to critical systems, such as stats and servers. The Summer Skirmish also, as you all probably noticed, highlighted problems with performance and spectating, which we’ve been working on ever since.”
It was reported in July that Fortnite had been downloaded 125 million times, and that was before it was even available on Android. Estimates previously believed around 40 million players were logging in to play every month, but the August player count is near double these estimates.
And all of those players is turning into some serious revenue for Epic Games – even for a completely free-to-play game, topping $1 billion total revenue back in May, with over $300 million coming in every month.
Fortnite makes its money through in game items such as character skins, backpacks, gliders and emotes, all of which will set the player back some ‘V-Bucks’ – which are purchased with real world currency.
Source: Epic Games