Fortnite Player Count 2022: How Many Gamers Still Play Fortnite In 2022?
It's surprising to reflect on the success of Epic Games' Fortnite, especially given the game's dismal start as a pure PVE game dubbed Save the World. Save the World, which had been in development for years, charted poorly upon its debut. After the popularity of PUBG, Epic Games recognized an opportunity and launched Fortnite: Battle Royale; the rest, as they say, is history. In 2021, how many people are still playing Fortnite, and is the game still alive?
Epic has been fairly circumspect about sharing official data in recent years, instead highlighting certain milestones in terms of number players reached.
In May 2020, Epic Games reported that Fortnite has 350 million registered accounts and that players had spent 3.3 billion hours in-game in April 2020. They reiterated the same figure in an August 2020 lawsuit against Epic. Of course, the global environment may have assisted both of these figures, but they are nonetheless amazing.
However, it appears as though the total number of Fortnite players has decreased significantly as a result of Epic Games' and Apple's major fallout. According to Epic, 116 million people play Fortnite on iOS devices, out of a total of 350 million people who have played the game.
It's worth noting, however, that those figures exclude secondary or additional accounts, despite the fact that it's still a significant milestone, particularly in light of the company's mobile woes. Due to its widespread popularity in popular culture and the game's free nature, Fortnite has become a game that a large number of people have played. However, particularly now that we've reached Chapter 3, this does not resolve the issue of who is still playing the game. Some elite Fortnite players continue to collect Free V Bucks using third-party apps to obtain additional v bucks.
Before we delve into the specifics of Fortnite's player count, it's critical to realize that any website claiming to have a current player count is completely bogus. Epic does not make such information available to the public for inspection at any time. For instance, Playercounter is frequently incorrect.
Fortnite in 2022
As previously stated, Fortnite peaked at 78.3 million concurrent players in August 2018. It was during the school holidays, which meant that younger players had all the time in the world to play the game, which was still relatively new on Switch at the time.
However, it appears as though Fortnite is far from dying in terms of daily active users (DAU). Fortnite's daily active users (DAU) were definitively revealed in August 2020 during the Epic Games vs. Apple App Store dispute.
According to the complaint files, 2.5 million of Fortnite's approximately 25 million DAU only played on iOS prior to the start of the legal battle between the two companies - Fortnite is no longer available on iOS.
After deducting 2.5 million iOS gamers, there are 22.5 million daily Fortnite players, according to August 2020 data. With many iOS users presumably migrating to other platforms, the latter statistic could be significantly higher at the moment. Fortnite boasts 116 million users on iOS, with 73 million of those people having never played the game on another platform.
With some simple (though imprecise) math, you can accurately determine how many Fortnite players are online at any one time. Based on the 22.5 million DAU that do not play on iOS, the average concurrent player per hour in August 2020 for Fortnite was 937,500. This would place it much ahead of other Steam games, but we lack particular statistics on whether Fortnite's user base is declining in 2021. According to Google Trends, the amount of people searching for Fortnite has declined, however this is not a trustworthy measure.
However, in November 2021, to honor the console's one-year anniversary, Sony released a list of the most played PS5 titles in terms of hours played over the preceding year, with Fortnite topping the list, followed by Call of Duty and FIFA.
In February 2019, Marshmello, a well-known EDM performer, held an in-game performance that was "played" by 10.7 million people. This broke the previous record of 8.3 million players set during Season 4's rocket event. On a related note, on February 16th, 2019, the game reached its highest player count for a non-event day, with 7.6 million players. By comparison, even the most popular Steam titles have difficulty reaching a million users in a single day.
The game did not achieve these heights fully until the black hole incident at the conclusion of Chapter 1, which we now refer to as Chapter 1. It was the most watched gaming event in history on Twitch, YouTube, and Twitter, with 42.8 million views on the latter. Twitch attracted 1.7 million viewers, while YouTube attracted 4.3 million. However, Epic has not disclosed the number of in-game gamers who witnessed The End.
Epic claimed in early 2020 that the first showing of the Travis Scott event drew 12.3 million concurrent players, smashing the previous record of 10.7 million for Marshmello's performance in early 2019. Epic later stated that 27.7 million unique gamers watched the event's several showings.
With the Season 4 event scheduled to conclude in late 2020, 15.3 million concurrent players watched as Galactus devoured up the Fortnite island and then regurgitated it. This represents a considerable increase above the previous peak, indicating that Fortnite remains popular.
Epic collaborated with another pop diva, this time Ariana Grande, on a concert and skin for Chapter 2 – Season 7 in 2021. Despite having many more followers than Travis Scott, Epic's refusal to disclose publicly on the number of people who attended Ariana Grande's concert suggests that it fell short of the previous record.
Fortnite on Twitch platform
It's worth mentioning that it peaked in May 2018 at 434,000 Twitch viewers before steadily dropping. For nearly a year, it was the most popular game on Twitch before League of Legends reclaimed the top spot.
Apex Legends' meteoric growth had little effect on overall viewership, with Fortnite briefly reclaiming the top rank on Twitch between March and July 2019. In 2020, Warzone faced stiff competition for Twitch viewing, with titles like Among Us and Fall Guys also vying for attention. All of this did not prevent Fortnite from becoming one of Twitch's most popular games in 2020, peaking at 2.28 million viewers in April and ending the year at 1.59 million.
Another video portrays Fortnite as one of the most popular games on the planet, having been so from 2017 to the present. The number of individuals discussing Fortnite does not appear to be decreasing, despite the fact that Animal Crossing and Valorant have exceeded it in terms of search volume in the early months of 2020.
Interestingly, despite the fact that it may not be the most popular game on the platform in 2021, the top content creators who play it appear to generate enormous audience for Twitch. David "TheGrefg" Martnez smashed the Twitch record for concurrent watchers in January 2021 with the revelation of his skin in-game, amassing more than 2 million.
Fortnite's revenue has suffered greatly as a result of declining Twitch viewing. Prior to the publishing of Chapter 2, overall revenue in 2019 was down 52% from 2018, however a considerable chunk of it was recovered afterwards.
By the end of 2019, Fortnite has raked in an astounding $1.8 billion in revenue, an enormous number. It is, however, a significant decrease from the $2.4 billion it generated in 2018, a decrease of around 25%. Chapter 2 and the abundance of Christmas skins and packs, as well as the numerous brand deals, may have aided in income growth.
It's also worth mentioning that, despite the revenue decline, Fortnite's popularity continues to soar. In 2019, only Apex Legends eclipsed Fortnite as the most downloaded free-to-play game on the PlayStation 4.
Even more amazing, the same blog creates a list of the most popular paid DLC releases of the year. Nobody comes close to matching Fortnite's dominance in every category.
According to a more recent PlayStation Blog post from July 2021, Fortnite is the second most downloaded free-to-play game on PS4 and PS5, trailing only Warzone and Apex Legends. This shows that they are not having difficulty attracting new gamers while maintaining engagement with existing ones.
Then, in January 2022, PlayStation revealed the most downloaded PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 titles of 2021, and it's unsurprising that Fortnite topped the free rankings in the United States and Europe.
There are, however, some plausible causes for Fortnite's declining profitability. The first reason is because the game had such an incredible year in 2018, that coming years will struggle to replicate it. The second reason is that Fortnite skins aren't as popular as they once were, with competitive players preferring plain, straightforward skins to showy ones. It's understandable, given the degree to which many Fortnite gamers take their game seriously these days.
Apple's feud with Epic Games is also likely to have had a substantial impact on Fortnite's 2020 income. Fortnite's daily active users (DAU) have decreased by 2.5 million, which can only have a negative effect on the company's bottom line.
Fortnite is still popular and will likely remain so for a long period of time. The reality is that the most professionals play Fortnite with the Fortnite V Bucks Generator to make the game easier to play. Epic may have harmed their Fortnite earnings as well by permanently lowering V-Bucks prices in attempt to garner the favor of their players, but this may have actually encouraged them to spend more. However, PlayStation is the game's largest market, accounting for 46.8 percent of total revenue, a sizable chunk that signals the iOS pullout will not be as disastrous as some had thought.