[TechCrunch]Epic Games, The Creators of Fortnite, Banked $3 Billion Profit in 2018.

Season passes and in-game items.

Because they aren't really that great as games. They're designed for profitability before all else and nearly always come at the expense of something that more serious gamers would enjoy just for the sake of profits. (Nearly always for a company that...wasn't having any problems staying in the black prior.)

I wouldn't care about Fortnite in the slightest if I knew we were still going to get a UT aimed at the market that likes more serious gamers (Especially as Epic absolutely has the cash to do both) but the second a trend takes off, everyone follows it and the rest of us suffer...and I'd say that gamers are getting sick of it given the increasing amount of resentment you see with AAA games these days. Take GTA V for example: We were meant to get two expansion sized DLC packs for it but Rockstar cancelled them and released the completed work as "free" DLC for Online. (Including the now famous $80 Delorean)

...That and these markets tend to be trend based, the gamers don't tend to complain about the stuff they dislike as much as people who are genuine fans of the series' (eg. I'm very hard on GTA Online because it's a pile of crap...and because I love GTA as a series and find it to be extremely disappointing) which leads to devs/publishers being out of touch with their customers...and what do you think caused the video game crash in the 80s? Devs were being forced to crap out games as fast as possible for publishers who wanted to capitalise on profitable names and the like (eg. ET) which lead to consumers just getting sick of being ripped off constantly...We've had the first two consistently get worse for the past two decades and the amount of people upset about the poor value of modern games increases every day.

It's not guaranteed to happen but if the publishers don't smarten up in the next few years, they're going to screw themselves over much like Activision has already managed with Guitar Hero the second they had a bit of pressure and competition from Rock Band. It's easy to give up some value during a tight time, it's much harder to get it back. (especially if times weren't ever actually tight despite the PR releases we get saying so. These are often public companies and you can see they're making a lot of money)
Heck, it might not even be gamers that do it...According to my friend who works at a retail game shop (Still very popular for console titles in Australia) nearly all Fortnite related sales are parents buying some vbucks while buying another game or something for their kid. There's a lot of adult gamers who play it for sure (I know of at least 6 myself) but I'd wager a lot of its profits aren't from that market given the fact that one of those six has actually purchased anything in it.

And sorry, but I don't consider "We're making more money!" to be that big of an achievement for a company. It's easy to make more money in the short term, it's another thing to do so without endangering your entire business model by constantly expecting more from the consumer. They can brag about it in PR statements and my reaction every time is "Uh...Cool, I guess? We're not really going to see benefits from it though, are we?"

There's also the fact that MP games are easier to make "fun" than SP games simply because you're more likely to be playing with mates. I've played games that are unequivocally bad but still managed to have some fun because I was playing with my mates, or even just talking to them on chat while I play.

That's why I laugh whenever I hear someone say that GTA Online is a great game...It's not. I rarely hear of anyone who doesn't play exclusively with friends and says it's a boring grindfest without their mates there, meanwhile the fan made mods for GTA SA are still fun to this day to join a random server and just start playing usually.

What defines a more serious gamer?

Epic found their WoW cash cow.

For real... Games like Chess and Go are super duper serious games on the world tournament circuit. They come packaged with an OS for free. I think. I want Free Skii back dammit.

I remember thinking the original non BR game mode looking interesting but looks like they gambled correctly.

Still free https://ski.ihoc.net/

People weren't buying it so they tried BR. Like you said, it paid off.

Ok i keep seeing this question about what makes fortnite not a gamer for serious gamers.

If you played fortnite for any period of time you know... Epic straight up hates its players. I mean they break the game before every tournament. And they arent hosted by esports or whatever because how bad they are with that. They constantly change ballistics and drop new items specifically to undermine their community. My friend who never stopped playing and is good has kept me in the loop even after i quit a year ago. Any competition organized without epic gets sabotaged.

Have you not seen the 200k tournament they busted with the sword release?

Its purely for these reasons... if you cant have consistent ballistics then how are you ever supposed to hit anything?

And theres a reason all the pros flip out when they do die. The game has alot of conflicts with its controlls and mechanics.

It comes back to what the one guy said about them taking every idiots advice and nerfing things.... they never stop messing with em...




And yeah the fact that its selling eclothes for 20$ an item just for profit. Doesnt help either





And yeah there really better be a reckoning with gaming in the next few years after all the companies crashed about 5 years ago. Nothing good has been made. And we are just getting graphic refreshes from AAA studios basically. I mean who buys CoD anymore? Its been the same game since mw2


I dunno fortnite is a cool game but once u start getting good its cracks become apparent. Definitely would not be as good a game without having ur buddies with you.

Problem is u grt emotionally invested and good n then u start losing more from glitches than other players skill.. theres just too much lottery

Oh my god my life is complete. Thank you!

This. Or, this....