'Fortnite' Had Its Biggest Month Yet In August With Nearly 80 Million Players

There is no question that the last-player-standing shooter game “Fortnite” is one of the most popular video games around, but developer Epic Games’ newest statistics are staggering. Epic revealed in a mostly unrelated blog post on Thursday that August was the biggest month yet for the free-to-play game, with nearly 80 million players logging in that month.

The post on Epic’s website was mostly about the new Fall Skirmish event in the game. However, the developer mentioned that 78.3 million players booted up “Fortnite” in August, a new record for the massive game. The extremely high player count that month apparently allowed Epic to refine some of its systems to get the game working better, according to the blog post.

That statistic is the latest development in what has been one of the video game industry’s most unlikely success stories in recent years. The game became playable to the general public in the summer of 2017, more than five years after it was originally announced. However, at launch, only the co-operative “Save the World” mode was available, as that was the game Epic originally wanted to make.

Just a few months later in September 2017, Epic launched the “Battle Royale” mode that propelled “Fortnite” to superstardom. The mode was decried by some as a rip-off of the similarly popular “PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds,” to the point where the developers of that game briefly sued Epic.

Nearly a year later, the game is available on almost every device that can play video games. Its June launch on Nintendo Switch was met with fanfare, while the game generates millions of dollars in revenue on iOS and Android devices every day. Nintendo is even going to sell a “Fortnite”-branded version of the Switch console in October.

In July, market research firm Superdata estimated “Fortnite” had generated $1 billion in revenue from the sale of in-game cosmetic items alone. Players do not need to pay any money to play “Fortnite,” but they have the option of spending real money on things like costumes and dances in the game.