IT HAS become one of the biggest games in the world with over 200 million players.
Whilst everyone is busy enjoying Fortnite some other questions are left unanswered like who exactly made it and whose idea was it? Here’s what we know…
Epic Games
Who made Fortnite?
Fortnite was first teased by Epic Games back in 2011 at the Spike Video Game Awards just three weeks after they initially came up with the idea.
If you follow the Epic chain of command all the way to the top, you’ll find some of the brightest minds in gaming, including eccentric CEO Tim Sweeney.
It was a departure in their usual fare which Epic fans will know was Unreal Tournament and Gears of War. They initially described Fortnite as “a world where you explore, you scavenge, you build and ultimately you survive.”
The game was developed to be released on the Unreal 4 game engine with an original release date of 2013.
In 2015 they let 50,000 players play the beta which enabled Epic to really understand the pros and cons of the game and how to make it better.
Battle Royale was released in September 2017 and by early 2018 it was the biggest game on the planet.
Who is Tim Sweeney and what is the story of Epic Games and Fortnite?
Tim Sweeney had been programming games since he was just 11, obsessed with the rapidly developing computing industry — and now has an estimated net worth $7.16 billion, according to Bloomberg.
Epic Games wasn’t born until 1991, when Tim Sweeney, then a 21-year-old mechanical engineering student at the University of Maryland, released the company’s first game, ZZT.
With a favourable reception from its few thousand dedicated fans, ZZT helped Sweeney establish a reputation for himself and for his company, and Epic, originally located at Sweeney’s parents’ house in Maryland, quickly grew into a proper business.
In 1998 Epic released first-person shooter game Unreal, which ran using Sweeney’s powerful new game development software: the Unreal Engine.
He realised that there was money in polishing the engine he had made and selling it to other game developers, and Epic became best known for the Unreal Engine – which is used to power most big-name games, including Fortnite, today.
Gears of War became one of the best-selling game series of all-time and the Unreal engine, currently in its fourth iteration, is the most successful game engine of all time.
Notable Unreal Engine games include Unreal Tournament, Tekken 7, Bioshock, Batman’s Arkham series and the upcoming Final Fantasy VII remake.
Years later, after dominating the industry for so long, Sweeney and his Epic colleagues realised that the games industry was changing: free-to-play models were becoming more popular, and players were demanding constantly evolving games.
So in 2012, a year after Fortnite was first announced, he teamed up with Chinese free-to-play gaming and app company Tencent, worth $580 billion (£428bn).
It’s this combination of Tencent’s experience and Epic’s vision which has made Fortnite the success it is today, with the free game making a fortune every month through small in-game purchases by players.
How much money does Fortnite make?
Fortnite really is a global phenomenon and brings in an incredible amount of cash.
A detailed analysis of the video game suggests it is bringing in nearly £400 million every month.
By June it had been played by over 125 million players, creating a massive cash surge at Epic Games, leading to the firm making a $3 billion profit in 2018.
Due to Sweeney’s controlling stake in Epic Games, he has now become a billionaire with his fortune set to rise as long as Fortnite remains the world’s hottest video game.