Development History
Fortnite: Save the World (2011-2017)
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Fortnite began from an internal game jam at Epic Games following the publishing of Gears of War 3 around 2011. Though it was not initially one of the developed titles during the jam, the concept of merging the construction game genre, representing games like Minecraft and Terraria, and shooter games arose, leading to the foundation of Fortnite. Development of Fortnite slowed due to several issues, including switching from the Unreal Engine 3 to Unreal Engine 4, a deeper role-playing game approach to extend the life of the game, and a switch of art style from a dark theme to a more cartoonish style. Further, Epic was looking to get into the games as a service model, and brought in Chinese publisher Tencent to help; Tencent took a large stake in Epic as part of this, leading to the departure of several executives, including Cliff Bleszinski, who had been a key part of Fortnite's development. Fortnite's approach was changed to be Epic's testbed for games as a service, and further slowed the development. Epic was able to prepare to release Fortnite as a paid early access title in July 2017, with plans to release it as free-to-play sometime in 2019 while gaining feedback from players to improve the game. With the release of Fortnite Battle Royale, the player-versus-environment mode was distinguished as "Save the World". Ultimately, Epic opted to release Save the World as a premium title, bringing it out of early access on June 29, 2020.
Fortnite Battle Royale (2017-2018)
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Near the same time that Epic released Fortnite into early access, PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds had become a worldwide phenomenon, having sold over 5 million copies three months from its March 2017 release, and drawing strong interest in the battle royale genre. Epic recognized that with the Fortnite base game, they could also do a battle royale mode, and rapidly developed their own version atop Fortnite in about two months. By September 2017, Epic was ready to release this as a second mode from "Save the World" in the paid-for earlier access, but then later decided to release it as a free game, Fortnite Battle Royale, supported with microtransactions. This version quickly gained players, with over 10 million players during its first two weeks of release, and leading Epic to create separate teams to continue the Fortnite Battle Royale development apart from the Save the World version, outside of common engine elements and art assets. This allowed Fortnite Battle Royale to expand to other platforms otherwise not supported by Save the World, including iOS and Android mobile devices and the Nintendo Switch.
Fortnite Creative (2018-2023)
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A creative sandbox mode launched on December 6, 2018, synchronized with the start of season 7 of Fortnite Battle Royale. Each player has access to a private, persistent island on which they construct buildings and add and manipulate objects as desired. Players are able to invite friends to this island and participate in unofficial games such as race tracks or jumping courses. Only players who purchased the battle pass initially received their own island, but a week later, on December 13, players who did not purchase it received access to the game mode for free.
Fortnite Experiences (2023-present)
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In March 2023, Epic released the Unreal Editor for Fortnite (UEFN), a standalone editor for Windows. UEFN allows creators to use the Unreal Editor with features of Unreal Engine 5 and Fortnite assets in developing new modes within the Fortnite Creative mode; this mode was called "Creative 2.0". In October 2023, Epic redesigned the main Fortnite client to present Epic's own various modes as well as the numerous creative modes as part of Fortnite Experiences, comparable to Roblox in presentation. This was followed by the introduction of three new Epic-developed modes for the game in December 2023: Lego Fortnite, a survival game developed in conjunction with The Lego Group, Rocket Racing, an arcade-style driving game developed by Psyonix, and Fortnite Festival, a rhythm game developed by Harmonix. Each mode was introduced as free-to-play, interfacing with the game's battle pass system, and offering new rewards associated with those modes. Numerous improvements in UEFN were announced in March 2024, including the addition of Unreal Engine's MetaHuman character rendering technology, and more assets from Lego, Rocket Racing, and Fall Guys. Epic also stated their intent to have future Fortnite Battle Royale seasons starting in late 2025 to be developed in UEFN.