Apex Legends, the latest Battle Royale launched on the market has proven to be one of the most fierce competitors of Fortnite, which still reigns supreme in the battle royale genre. However, for Epic Games management, there is still nothing to worry about.
The Respawn Battle Royale is grinding incredible stats just for fun as Apex Legends has reached 50 million players worldwide in just over a month since its launch on February 4th. Furthermore, it seems that Electronic Arts paid $ 1 million to Ninja, the famous streamer, to advertise the game and also partnered with Shroud, another well-known face of streaming.
SO happy to be back streaming for you guys! Going live, playing the Apex Legend Battle Royal! #ApexPartner https://t.co/QC3Dpr8MTr
— Ninja (@Ninja) February 5, 2019
However, analyzing the numbers of Epic Games it turns out that Fortnite has 250 million active players or five times those of Apex Legends. Although it took only 30 days to reach 50 million active players, Fortnite succeeded in doing so in four months. The success of Respawn’s Battle Royale is obviously partly due to the huge popularity of the genre due to the tremendous work done by Fortnite in recent years.
The game still enjoys excellent success, as explained by Tim Sweeney of Epic Games. Fortnite has twice touched a peak of players without any event taking place. After the release of Apex Legends, the Fortnite title did not have any significant player drop. Tim further goes on to say that the competition is good, but the only game that manages to get Fortnite players away is FIFA, another game that is quite popular all over the world.
$ 100 million grants by Epic
The developers of Fortnite have announced that they will distribute grants totaling $ 100 million. Those who use the Unreal Engine 4 will be able to apply for them.
The amount of grants will range from $ 5,000 to $ 500,000. Epic Games announced that applicants would not need to enter into exclusive contracts with the company in order to qualify for the money. Fortnite developers also noted that they will not set a clear deadline for applications.
Epic Games announced $100 million in Fortnite prize money through 2018 and 2019. 😳
So far, ~$20 million has been awarded, $62 million was pledged as part of the Fortnite World Cup announcement and $18 million is unaccounted for. 💸https://t.co/tMgTL2qURc
— Fortnite News (@FortINTEL) February 26, 2019
Potential grant recipients should fall into one of five categories: game development, media and entertainment, entrepreneurship, education, and open source development. In each application, you must specify how the applicants are planning to use the Unreal Engine 4.
Successful February for Fortnite
Fortnite ranked fifth in the February 2019 ranking of the most profitable video games on PC. The Epic Games “Royal Battle” bypassed Apex Legends and Dota 2. Dungeon Fighter Online became the leader of the top among computer users. A report on the market was published by SuperData on March 22.
Fortnite registered 250 million players. Epic Games reported these figures at the conference GDC 2019. Over the past four months, the audience of the shooter has grown by 50 million people. The game also set a new record for the simultaneous number of users – 10.8 million people. This is 0.1 million more than the number of spectators who in February watched Chris Marshmello Comstock concert in Fortnite. Fortnite has a monthly audience of 78.3 million.
