Epic has released a 2024 "Year in Review" of the Fortnite creator ecosystem and, surprise surprise, there are a lot of big numbers to be had. As well as an overview of the year just gone, the publisher also took the opportunity to share some of the future plans for Fortnite which, going by these figures, is simply bigger than ever.
The number of Fortnite creators tripled over the year, from around 24,000 in 2023 to 70,000 in 2024. The number of islands created is 198,000 and on average 60,000 creator-made islands are played every single day, with 70% of the playerbase enjoying both Epic-made and creator-authored content.
Then the money. Epic says it paid out a total of $352M to creators in 2024, but then comes possibly the most interesting breakdown in the review. Just under 30,000 creators received payouts of $100-$999; Around 5,400 made $1,000 to $9,999; 1,728 made between $10,000 and $99,999, and then we get into the people who are really making bank.
418 Fortnite creators made between $100,000 and $300,000. 154 made between $300,000 and $1 million.
37 people made between $1 million and $3 million from Fortnite's creator program in 2024. 14 people made over $3 million but less than $10 million. Then right at the top, there are seven individuals who made over $10 million from their Fortnite creations. In a single year.
That's 58 people who've made more than $1 million from Fortnite in 2024, with many making a lot more. The fact that Fortnite is so big that Epic is now paying out roughly a third of a billion dollars to community creators in a single year is almost impossible to wrap your head around.
Other stats: Players spent 5.23 billion hours playing games made by creators, which represents "36.5% of total Fortnite playtime and continues to rise." Epic notes that these numbers are increasingly boosted by non-combat creations such as "social roleplay, party games, deathruns, and horror."
This has no doubt been helped by Fortnite's ongoing mission to get every brand ever into the game, with creators able to use these official tie-ins, which is pretty remarkable when you think about it. Assets from brands like LEGO and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles can be used and Epic says this allows creators to "develop authentic commercial games using world class IP without getting lost in contracts or negotiations."
Epic lists some of the creator highlights of the year, one of which shows the above perfectly: Pizza Shop Tycoon Boss Fight used Fortnite's assets to create "an authentic and engaging Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles experience" that has proven wildly popular, and is officially licensed.
As for the future, Epic says it will be "moving Scene Graph into Beta, introducing custom items, and launching additional tools to help you build deeper, more complex games with UEFN in new and popular genres." On top of this it's committing to improving the insight tools for developers, improving the Discover experience where players explore the range of what's available, and promises a roadmap by the end of the month with more details.
Well, it's probably no wonder that Epic CEO Tim Sweeney says the company has spent billions fighting Apple and Google, and fully intends to keep doing so. And even if a certain buzzword has fallen out of favour, he still thinks Fortnite is at the forefront of gaming's future:
"Some people call it the Metaverse and some people call it just games, but it is real," says Sweeney. "And you find hundreds of millions of players who are highly engaged in immersive 3D games together with their friends. And we think that if we are successful with this, then someday there will be billions of users of this kind of game. And we think we're in an awesome position to be a leading company or perhaps the leading company in that world if the shackles are removed that prevent us and all developers from actually competing on our own and becoming first class companies in the industry."
With numbers like these, it's hard to argue.
