Fortnite Hits Another Major Milestone

Over the past year-plus, Fortnite has grown into a massively popular game on the back of its battle royale mode. With it facing increased competition, Epic Games has provided an update on just how big Fortnite has grown. At GDC 2019 this week, it announced the title has now reached 250 million registered players, which is up from 200 million in December.

In terms of people actually playing the game, Epic also revealed that Fortnite reached a new concurrent player record of 10.8 million. That's up slightly from February when 10.7 million people logged on at the same time during the Marshmello in-game concert. This number accounts for the peak number of players who are online at the same time. Bear in mind that Apex Legends released in early February, and that game's incredibly success hasn't prevented Fortnite from reaching new heights.

Epic, of course, carry on providing Fortnite: Battle Royale updates to keep the game fresh. The most recent, version 8.11, adds a new weapon (the Flint-Knock Pistol), another LTM, and more. Along with it, Week 4 challenges are available.

While Fortnite is one of the most popular games in recent history, it may still be behind Minecraft on one metric. Microsoft's sandbox game reportedly has 91 million monthly players, which is ahead of Fortnite's 78.3 million. However, these figures haven't been updated in some time, so it remains to seen if anything has changed.

Remarking on Fortnite's massive success, Epic boss Tim Sweeney told Engadget, "It's a real game. It's a shooter. It's worldwide. It's the first shooter with a huge female population. Somebody estimated it at roughly 35 percent, which is unprecedented--why isn't it 50?--but it's unprecedented for anything like this. It's because it brings together players in a social experience."

In other Fortnite-related news, Epic announced at GDC that it's created a $100 million fund for developers that was made possible thanks to the success of Fortnite. What's more, Epic announced that Quantic Dream's PlayStation-exclusive titles including Heavy Rain, Beyond: Two Souls, and Detroit: Become Human are coming to the Epic Games Store this year.