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On the weekend of the upcoming Fortnite 
World Cup, July 25 will mark two years to the day since Fortnite: Save The World officially launched. Back in that first month of launch, no one would have predicted what was to follow.
Reading early reviews, hints were there. While the game failed to impress critics because the core Save The World mode featured an unimpressive and unavoidable progression system, the mechanics of Fortnite – the build and loot systems, destructibility, and core shooter mechanics – received praise.
What Fortnite didn’t lack was developer commitment. Over the weeks that followed the team at Epic Games offered players regular updates and new game modes.
There’s an opinion online that Epic Games added Battle Royale to Fortnite because the original game was dying. But looking back, Fortnite: Battle Royale launched as a beta feature for Save The World owners just six weeks after the original Early Access launch date. The full free-to-play launch was just two weeks later on Sept. 26, 2017.
So much can seem inevitable in hindsight. A free-to-play, kid-friendly, colorful BR game available on all platforms? It seems to make plenty of sense now, but Epic Games was the one to make it seem so obvious.
Two weeks after Fortnite: Battle Royale opened to all, Epic Games announced the game had passed 10M players. By Nov. 6 the count was 20M players. The snowball grew quickly, and just a few months later the biggest stars in the world were hanging out with the most popular Fortnite player out there. A cultural phenomenon was born.
The biggest Battle Royale until that time, PLAYERUNKNOWN’S BATTLEGROUNDS (PUBG), was slow to deliver significant updates and improvements through the preceding year, which left the door open for a competitor to draw the attention of fans of the emerging genre. It’s a hallmark of Fortnite that rapid iteration and evolution were part of what helped it keep players hooked.
We just passed 20 million players across all of Fortnite since launch! Thanks from the bottom of our ??? pic.twitter.com/LuVV5vb7wj
— Fortnite (@FortniteGame) November 6, 2017
But storms have swirled outside the game too, with controversy and lawsuits making Epic earn every step, season-by-season, skirmish-by-skirmish.
Season One and Two: Structural Foundations
The first season launched Oct. 25, 2017, and it was just about the basics. It introduced the progression concept that would define the seasonal format for Fortnite, but with just one icon and one glider to be earned. A “Fortnitemares” event took place during this season, which saw the Pumpkin Rocket Launcher appear in the game – the origins of the rocket riding (see below) that became one of the first viral hit features of the game for content creators.
After a short first season, season two launched on Dec. 14, 2017, and brought the Battle Pass with it. Along with skins and gliders, season two also added emotes to the game, the dance moves that would become a signature of the game’s style.
As the game continued to draw massive player numbers quickly, January 2018 saw Bluehole and its subsidiary PUBG Corporation file a lawsuit against Epic Games claiming copyright infringement. The case would take many months to be resolved, with Bluehole eventually dropping the case in late June, 2018, with no details of whether a settlement had been reached or any other deal had been made.
Season Three: Drake Drops By
The third season, launched Feb. 22, 2018, saw the addition of weekly challenges to the progression system, giving Battle Pass owners new reasons to play regularly and explore the island in ways that stepped outside the fundamental focus on being the last player standing.
Cosmetic options continued to grow with the addition of contrails to spice up every player’s time falling out of the sky.
Beyond the core system adjustments, this was the season when Fortnite shifted into full mainstream pop-culture consciousness. On March 15, 2018, the rapidly rising superstar of Fortnite, Tyler ‘Ninja’ Blevins, teamed up with Drake and broke the Twitch record for most concurrent viewers of a single channel.
Credit: The Esports Observer/Esports Business Solutions UG
By April, Blevins passed 5M Twitch followers. And that same month, Fortnite: Battle Royale launched for iPhone and iPad, quickly adding millions of players to the game’s community.
Season Three was the end of the beginning. Fortnite was now defining the gaming zeitgeist. The mainstream world had started paying attention, the doubters wondered how long it could last, and the first questions were raised about whether the darling of celebrity Twitch streaming could find a path into esports.
Epic delivered its first answer to that question in Season Four, which kicks off part two of our look back at Fortnite’s journey so far.
