Fortnite in 2020: How many people are playing?

Fortnite: Battle Royale first came into the scene in 2017 as a free to play early access title from Epic Games. After it's initial launch, it took Fortnite less than a year to draw in more than 125 million players.

Although Fortnite has received it's fair share of flak from the community for the cartoon style of animation, it has done extremely well among the younger players. According to statista.com,

"The reasons why Fortnite has become such a global hit are clear to see. Not only is the game free, but it is also available on most gaming platforms. On top of this, the Battle Royale-style, in which up to 100 players fight it out at one time, mean that the re-playability of the game is infinite – each game is unique."

"The cartoon style of the game unsurprisingly lends itself more to the younger audience, with almost two-thirds of Fortnite’s players aged between 18 and 24. It also seems that it is not just the casual gamers that are attracted to this game as over 20 percent of Fortnite fans admitted to devoting over 16 hours to the game per week."

The history of Fortnite

First released on 26th September 2017 in early access, Fortnite: Battle Royale - a 100 player battle royale game, was a companion game to the paid version Fortnite: Save the World - a co-op survival game with similar construction elements.

The game was initially launched on PC, Mac, Xbox One and PS4. However after the roaring initial success of the game, Fortnite: Battle Royale was re-established as a distinct free to play title with a cosmetic based revenue model for all the aforementioned platforms.

From 2018, Epic Games started rolling out regular updates to the game, as later in the year, Fortnite made a number of shocking announcements such as cross platform play as well as the announcment of an iOS beta. Later in the same year, Fortnite: Battle Royale was reviewed by IGN and scored a 9.6 rating.

In the month of June, Fortnite was released on Switch and by July, Fortnite had reportedly generated more than a billion dollars from in game sales.

Fortnite had already become one of the most successful video games ever, even before stepping out of the 'early access' phase.

Ever since the initial success of Fortnite, followed by major esports events like the Fortnite World Cup, the game has never had to work too hard to stay relevant or popular among it's players.

Starting from regular game fixing updates to unique and well thought out seasonal events, Epic has kept the player base as well as the entire community quite pleased with Fortnite so far.

Also check out: The latest Fortnite Prop hunt codes

How many players does Fortnite officially have in 2020?

According to reports from statista.com and other leading esports news outlets, Fortnite had approximately 350 million registered accounts.

However, according to gamesradar.com,

"The most recent numbers we have for how many people play Fortnite comes from the recent Travis Scott concert event. That boasted 12.3 million concurrent players. That's a big step up from the 10.8 million concurrent players that logged on for the in-game live Marshmello concert."

"'Concurrent players' means that number were all online at once, so active players, in the game during the event. The other number you'll hear mentioned a lot is that Fortnite has 250 million players in total, as of March 2019"

"That, however, counts every registered account, active or otherwise. The fact that we've not had any update on that in over a year would suggest Epic has yet to beat that peak."

What could the future have in store for Fortnite?

At this point in time, anything that we say or think about the future of Fortnite is nothing more than mere speculation. Having said that, it does remain to be seen if the collaborations that Epic Games has been doing with brands like Marvel will pay off in the long run or not.

We have seen in the past with games like CS:GO and League of Legends, that it is possible to accumulate a massive player base by sticking to core fundamentals. However, the same cannot be applied to Fortnite as it is a game which is continuously in a state of change.

Although collaborations would help the game reach out to more diverse communities and pave the way for new players to join, it would also mean that the players who fell in love with Fortnite for it's core mechanics might eventually get disappointed.

This being said, it is safe to say that with the number of concurrent players on Fortnite, and the regular updates and seasonal changes coming from the developers, Fortnite's going to stay afloat as a mainstream game for many more years to come.

Also check out: The best Fortnite Horror map codes