How Did Fortnite Take Over?

Fortnite started off as something less than a success. As originally released last July, it was a cooperative third-person shooter with interesting but messy crafting mechanics—a little bit Gears of War, a little bit Minecraft, with some of the cartoonish glee of Team Fortress 2. Then, inspired by the unanticipated success of PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds, Epic added a free-to-play "battle royale" mode in September: one hundred players on a large island, fighting for survival, with all the fort-building mechanics of the main game intact. And it exploded.

Raking in an estimated $318 million a month, blockbuster video game "Fortnite" is no child's play. The big number you'll see mentioned is that Fortnite has 250 million players in total as of March 2019.