What caused the popular game “Fortnite” to fall off?

Written by Daisy Rodgers

Fortnite is a very well known game; it is played world wide by many people everyday. In recent years though, Fortnite has reached a point where it seems to have “fallen off.”

The game first became popular in late 2017 to 2019, and then became popular again during the Fortnite OG season in late 2023, which was the highest player count recorded in all of the game's history.

Picture representing the fall off of Fortnite

From the launch of the game in 2017, the game reached a total of 20 million players by the end of 2017 and then grew to be over 125 million by early 2019.

In recent years, Fortnite's reached a point where it seems they have run out of ideas all together, and seems like they’re recycling their old ideas while trying to make them seem new again.

Many creators have quit this game for what it has become in the last couple of years, the reason for this appears to be the lack of creativity that Fortnite has to offer--it’s not as trendy as it was in 2017-2019. There are now new games, better graphic games, and different games that offer more.

The player count may not even be the most significant problem since Fortnite has lost a lot of their OG players that helped make their game what it is today. 

According to the May 2025 report from MSN, “Fortnite's active player count is down about 40% from its December 2024 peak of 2.1 million daily players to a low of 994,711 daily players in May 2025. This decline followed a period of significant growth, with the game reaching 650 million registered users by 2025. While the player count has seen a recent downward trend, the game's daily active player base remains over one million.”

While the player count is still up there, it could continue to grow if Fortnite advanced in a more creative way, for instance: using ideas that people have and applying them to the game itself so there doesn’t have to be a decline at all.