At this point, the crazy, ridiculous success of Fortnite doesn’t need to be explained anymore. It is the most popular video game in the world right now, and reports about the insane numbers Epic Games generates from the free to play battle royale title are a dime a doze. Well, here’s another one for you- in 2018, Fortnite had the most annual revenue for a video game ever.
According to a report by Super Data (via Game Informer), Fortnite generated $2.4 billion in revenue for Epic Games in 2018, thanks to in-game purchases made by players for skins, emotes, and season passes- that puts it ahead of any game ever made in terms of revenue generated across the span of a calendar year. In total, all free-to-play games collectively earned $87.7 billion in revenue last year, which amounts for 80% of revenue generated by all video games.
As I said, this isn’t all that surprising anymore. On iOS devices alone, Fortnite earned $455 million in revenue across 2018, while it was also the most played game on the Nintendo Switch for the year. And when services like Netflix tell you that Fortnite is bigger competition to them than fellow streaming services, you know it’s a big deal.