Epic Games’ Fortnite has taken the gaming world by storm, from its meteoric rise as a new hit game to its recent announcement as the biggest game in the world . But there are still some things about Fortnite that even veteran players don’t know — and that’s why we created this list of mind-blowing facts about the popular video game. If you can believe it, Epic Games originally made Fortnite with hopes of using it as a foundation for learning how to create online games, not actually thinking that anyone would want to play it!
1. Fortnite was not originally intended to be a battle royale game
Fortnite was originally intended to be a cooperative game where up to four players team up against waves of zombies. The game started development in 2011, but its original release date was set for March 2015. However, the developers were unable to meet this deadline and they chose to launch an early access version of the game on July 25th, 2017 instead. It was only after releasing this version of the game that Epic Games realized how much potential their new battle royale mode had.
2) The game was almost shut down in 2018
In September of 2018, the company behind Fortnite was acquired by Epic Games for $8.4 billion. The following month, Tencent purchased a 40% stake in Epic Games for about $400 million. On December 3rd, 2018, Sony announced that they would start selling the game on their PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 4 Pro consoles on December 13th.
3) Epic Games has made over $1 billion from in-game purchases
In January 2018, Epic Games announced that they have made over $1 billion from in-game purchases. The game is free to play and available on all gaming platforms.