Fortnite at 120M MAUs
Jan-Erik Asplund
When we wrote about Epic Games in November, we estimated their 2023 revenue at $4.2B, down 19% from $5.2B in 2022, because of declining engagement and conversion on their core product, the cross-platform, battle royale game Fortnite.
Now, revenue growth at Epic Games is re-accelerating. Sacra estimates that Epic's forward annualized revenue run rate has grown 30% to $5.7B in 2024, and they have a new model for how to keep growing it.
Key points from our research:
- Between December 2018 and October 2023, Fortnite’s monthly active users (MAUs) declined from 80M to roughly 35M before jumping to an all-time high of 100M in November 2023 after the re-release of Fortnite’s original "OG" map. After using the nostalgia effect to reactivate tens of millions of churned players into redownloading Fortnite, MAUs grew even further to ~120M in December—after the OG map was rotated out—with another all-time high of 11.6M players playing concurrently at peak.
- Thanks to Fortnite’s turnaround, Sacra estimates that Epic Games is on track to grow revenue by 30% to $5.7B in 2024, with Fortnite revenue at $5.1B (up 30% year-over-year), Unreal Engine revenue at $325M (up 18%) and Epic Games Store revenue flat at $285M. Sacra projects 90M average MAUs for Fortnite across 2024—compare to 355M MAUs for Roblox (NYSE: RBLX) at ~$2.8B of annual revenue (up 38%) and 191M MAUs for Microsoft’s Minecraft (NASDAQ: MSFT) at $100M of annual revenue.
- The Fortnite metaverse—which persists identity and player-owned assets like skins and emotes shared across multiple sub-games—enables Fortnite to de-risk against the decline we saw from 2022 to 2023 by diversifying away from pure battle royale by launching new games into the same universe. By launching new 'spoke games' like Lego Fortnite (a free-to-play Minecraft), Rocket Racing, and the rhythm-based Fortnite Festival into their Fortnite hub, Epic can continually reactivate old users while driving velocity and margin by re-purposing existing content and IP.
For more on Epic Games and Fortnite, check out this other research from our platform:
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