How Many People Play Fortnite In 2020?

It's kind of crazy to chart the success of Epic Games' Fortnite, especially after it had such an underwhelming start as a pure PVE experience which was later renamed Save the World. In the making for years, Save the World didn't set the charts ablaze when it released. Seeing an opportunity after the rise of PUBG, Epic made Fortnite: Battle Royale, and the rest is history. Years later, how many people still play Fortnite?

Epic have been very conservative when it comes to releasing official figures in recent times, only mentioning specific landmarks of total players reached. The last official word on Fortnite's playerbase came in August 2018 when it reached a peak of 78.3 million for the month. Since then, Epic have been quiet with regards to how many people still play Fortnite, but they did mention in March 2019 that they had 250 million total players. Between June 2018 and March 2019, 125 million players created Fortnite accounts.

It's important to note, however, that that figure does not exclude secondary or spam accounts, though it's still a significant milestone. With its significant pop culture status and the game's free nature, you'd have to estimate that the game is nearing the 300 million mark. That doesn't answer the question of who's still playing the game, however.

How Many People Play Fortnite?

As mentioned, the peak playerbase for Fortnite was 78.3 million way back in August of 2018. This was when the game was relatively new to Switch and it was the holidays for school, meaning that younger players had all the time in the world to play.

Since then, player figures are hard to come across, but there are some in-game events that hint of the game's continuing popularity.

In February 2019, popular EDM artist held an in-game concert "played" by 10.7 million people. This overtook the previous record held by the rocket event of Season 4, which brought in 8.3 million players. On a similar note, the game enjoyed a peak player count for a non-event for a single day with 7.6 million players on February 16th.

The game didn't hit the heights quite like these until the black hole event at the end of what we now know as Chapter 1. It went down as the most viewed gaming event in history on Twitch, YouTube, and Twitter with a staggering 42.8 million views on the latter. YouTube numbers reached 4.3 million viewers and 1.7 million viewers on Twitch. Epic have not released official word on how many in-game players witnessed The End, however.

Staying on viewing figures, the video below shows how the game's popularity has ebbed and flowed on Twitch since launch.

This is not a definitive sign of where Fortnite's popularity is at now, but it's interesting that it hit a high of 434,000 viewers on Twitch in May 2018 before a gradual decline. It stayed top on Twitch for viewers for almost a whole year before League of Legends reclaimed its throne.

Interestingly, Apex Legends' sudden surge didn't do much to dampen its viewers overall, with Fortnite briefly returning to the Twitch summit from March 2019 to July 2019.

Along with some declining Twitch viewership, Fortnite's revenue has also taken a severe hit. Overall revenue in 2019 compared to 2018 saw a 52% decrease , though it did manage an overall peak in December 2018.

There are a couple of possible factors to Fortnite's declining revenues, the first being that 2018 was such an astounding success for the game that any subsequent years would struggle to match it. The second reason is that Fortnite skins aren't quite as in demand as they once were, the competitive players favouring simple, basic skins over the flashy ones. With a lot of Fortnite players taking the game very seriously these days, it makes sense.

As expected for anything in the limelight for so long, Fortnite's popularity seems to have waned, but it's still absolutely massive.

The Future of Fortnite

With the launch of Chapter 2 bringing a whole new set of eyes on the game and also possibly bringing some old players back, the amount of people playing Fortnite is almost certainly still massive.

Any mention of Fortnite dying feels, really, just a bit silly, especially when it's almost always in the top five most viewed games on Twitch even when other games have special events on and events like The End can bring in staggering viewing figures. Sure, it may never reach the same heights it did when Ninja played with Drake and the Twitch Prime packs were released, but Fortnite is more than alive and kicking.

Epic Games don't seem to be able to crack the biggest market on the planet, however: China. PUBG Mobile still reigns supreme over there with The End event not reaching as many players as it should have. If Fortnite can somehow crack China, that would see its numbers skyrocket once again.

Fortnite: Battle Royale is free-to-play on PC via the Epic Games Store, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, iOS, and Android.

MORE FORTNITE:– Fortnite 2 – Season 1 New Map Named Locations & Landmarks– My (Too) Long Quest For 100 Fortnite Wins– The Best Fortnite Skins To Add To Your Locker

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