As has now been revealed through the court dispute between Apple and Epic Games, the online shooter Fortnite generated an incredible sum of $9,165,000,000 in 2018 and 2019. That would have been enough to buy the SF franchise Star Wars from LucasFilm twice – or once Bethesda (Fallout/The Elder Scrolls).
Where do the numbers come from? Apple and Epic Games are currently involved in several lawsuits against each other: Epic Games complains that they have to give a large portion of their Fortnite earnings to Apple on iPhones and iPads. They had stood up against this. Apple subsequently removed them from their platform. Epic Games feels treated unfairly here and demands “Free Fortnite.”
Apple, on the other hand, complains that Epic Games has breached their contract and tried to circumvent the payment methods in the App Store in a sneaky operation.
In any case, court proceedings are now bringing to light information that one normally does not hear. For example, an answer to the question: How much money did Fortnite make at its peak?
The hearing was interrupted earlier by children who shouted “Free Fortnite” and other phrases in between.
Fortnite reached revenues of over $9.1 billion in 2018 and 2019
This is how much Fortnite earned at its peak: Epic reveals the revenue figures from a presentation in January 2020 (via assets.documentscloud.org):
- In 2018, Fortnite generated $5.4 billion – at today’s exchange rate, that would be about €4.5 billion
- In 2019, it was still $3.7 billion
2018 is generally seen as the peak of Fortnite. Twitch streamers like Tyler “Ninja” Blevins introduced the shooter to a large audience. Fortnite entered the mainstream as music stars like Drake and mainstream sports magazines showed interest in the game. At that time, it seemed like Fortnite was the topic on every playground and was being played in every children’s room and many living rooms.
2019 was the big year of the Fortnite World Championship, which generated even more hype, although the thrill was already beginning to fade.
This is how much money that is in relation: As calculated by the US site Kotaku, the $9.16 billion that Fortnite generated during that time would be enough to buy the Star Wars franchise. Disney acquired it for $4 billion from Lucasfilm. Fortnite could also have financed the purchase of Bethesda by Microsoft on its own: Bethesda is said to have cost $7.5 billion.
The revenues of Fortnite are not profits yet, but the way Epic Games behaves, it seems that they have money to spare. They have deliberately pumped a lot of money into the Epic Games Store to challenge market leader Steam:
Epic invests a lot of money in the fight against Steam – incurs over $300 million in losses
