A recent annual review from Epic Games reported strong growth in Fortnite’s creator program. The number of users building custom content in the massively successful battle royale game nearly tripled year-over-year, and the number of unique creations doubled. Although Roblox is still far larger, some believe Fortnite could become the YouTube of gaming.
According to Epic, 2024 saw around 70,000 Fortnite users create scenarios in Unreal Editor for Fortnite, a user-generated content platform that incorporates some of Unreal Engine 5’s advanced tools. The figure is a substantial increase from the 24,000 reported in 2023. The number of “islands,” or Fortnite user creations, totaled 198,000 last year. Most were built using the Unreal Editor, exposing thousands to a potential gateway into proper Unreal Engine development.
Furthermore, around 70 percent of Fortnite players explored user-generated content. Custome scenarios account for over one-third of the time users spend playing Fortnite, suggesting that the user base no longer views it as exclusively a battle royale game.
Analyst Julia Alexander compared the growth of Fortnite creations to YouTube’s creator economy. Both platforms aim to maximize users’ time spent on them by paying creators to make original content. Epic paid $352 million to Fortnite creators in 2024, up 11 percent year-over-year.
One crucial difference Alexander observes between Fortnite and YouTube is the former’s relative lack of content that significantly deviates from Fortnite’s standard gameplay. YouTube has evolved to offer videos on practically any subject imaginable, but Epic’s report also highlights increasingly diverse Fortnite creations.
About 30 percent of playtime in Fortnite’s user-generated content this month was spent on genres without combat, such as horror, social roleplay, or party games – a significant increase from January 2024. Epic also cited specific creations incorporating RPG and simulation management elements. These were likely possible due to creator tools Epic introduced last year, such as a first-person camera, proximity chat, user interface controls, and custom NPCs.
However, Bloomberg reports that Fortnite still lags behind Roblox, which paid creators $741 million in 2023 and grew its player base by 24 percent last year compared to Fortnite’s 15 percent. Analysts told the outlet that Fortnite’s most popular custom modes come from Epic, whereas Roblox is designed entirely around user-made experiences.
Epic once stated that it wishes Fortnite and Unreal to become akin to a Metaverse. While that word has less buzz than it used to, a competition to build something like it has emerged between Fortnite, Roblox, and Minecraft. Even Meta hasn’t given up. In its latest earnings report, Meta lost another $5 billion in VR Metaverse R&D last year, showing it hasn’t abandoned Zuck’s Metaverse ambitions.