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The Fortnite Phenomenon is Dying – is it Dragging Epic Down?

Last Updated September 23, 2020 1:33 PM
William Worrall
Last Updated September 23, 2020 1:33 PM
  • Fortnite has been one of the most popular games online for the past few years.
  • Recently signs have started to show that the game is heading towards a decline.
  • There’s a big chance that Fortnite could drag Epic Games down with it if they’re not careful.

Fortnite has been unbelievably popular for the past few years. Since it released back in 2017, it’s managed to gain a huge following. Hundreds of millions of players have signed up for the game , and it has made Epic Games rich.

All good things come to an end though. It looks like Fortnite’s flash of popularity might be starting to dip slightly. No active player stats have been released for months, and with fewer people tuning in for competitive games , it seems a decline is inevitable.

Fortnite, Minecraft, Pokemon - Popularity Charts
Since Fortnite launched it experienced a huge bump in popularity, but that has started to decline. For the most part, other games like Pokemon and Minecraft have been pretty consistent during that time. | Source: Google Trends 

Fortnite the Fad?

Fortnite has had a meteoric rise to popularity since It was released in July of 2017 and hit 78 million monthly active players by August 2018 . That’s a pretty impressive growth spurt.

Now that viewership for competitive Fortnite has declined so sharply , many are starting to think that Fortnite is just a fad that is starting to die off.

Minecraft was also considered a fad at one time. It too peaked in popularity around August of 2013 before taking a pit of dive. But, thanks to constant updates, and built-in replayability, the game has managed to stay pretty popular.

So what’s different for Fortnite?

Fortnite - Lack of Content Tweets
It’s easy to tell that players are starting to get frustrated with the lack of new content in the game. | Source: Twitter 

The Content Isn’t Enough

It’s often said about games like Minecraft that there is an infinite amount of things to do. Each time a player logs into Minecraft they’re presented with an insane amount of options. Mod packs, special servers, local servers, single-player, LAN connections, etc.

Fortnite just doesn’t have that breadth of content available. It’s pretty easy to see from reactions to the content announcements on Twitter that players are getting frustrated by the lack of content.

If Fortnite is struggling to keep people interested, how long is it going to last? Remember, the point isn’t to say that the game is dead, just that it seems to be dying. The question is, what could this do to Epic and its fledgling storefront?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OiQ2g5ObZFA

Fortnite Might Take Epic Down With It

It’s no secret that Epic has invested a lot of money into the Epic Games Store. Most of that money almost certainly came off of the success of Fortnite. While public perception is starting to turn, people are still not completely happy with the Epic Games Store.

If Epic ends up losing the Fortnite revenue they could be in trouble. The store is nowhere near finished enough to stand on its own. With some pretty big promises made to developers, they could find themselves rapidly becoming unprofitable.