If you’re a parent who’s tired of Fortnite, we’ve got some bad news for you. It’s not going anywhere.
Epic Games reports the number of registered users for the game has hit 200 million—up from 125 million in June and a mere 40 million in January.
That’s a phenomenal growth rate for the free-to-play game, which has turned into a cash machine for Epic and its part owner Tencent Games as players spend freely on in-game items.
The title, which crossed the $1 billion dollar sales threshold in July, has become a touchstone in the gaming world. New releases from competitors now need to include a battle royale multiplayer mode, offering their own take on the gameplay style. This is where players are dropped into an ever-shrinking area and the last one alive wins the game.
Both Activision’s Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 and Take-Two Interactive Software’s Red Dead Redemption 2, for example, have competing modes.
While 200 million is an impressive number of registered users, it’s unclear how many of those users are actively playing the game. Earlier this month, Fortnite hit a record of 8.3 million concurrent players.
Viewers on Twitch declined last September with the release of the game’s sixth season, but Epic is working hard to sustain player interest. Earlier this year, it announced it would provide $100 million to fund prize pools for the game’s first year of competitive play. That figure is four times larger than any esports tournament has ever offered. And over Thanksgiving weekend, it launched a $1 million qualifying event for an upcoming World Cup-like Fortnite tournament.
