Here’s a slightly crazy statistic: Gamers around the world have spent a combined 10.4 million years playing Fortnite, according to a new report. That’s considerably longer than the 6 million years humans have been around in some form.
In total, the top 10 games played online have been played for some 19.2 million years. World of Warcraft, Overwatch, Grand Theft Auto V and Witcher 3 make up the rest of the top five.
The numbers were run by Game.co.uk. It notes that:
“It’s no surprise that Fortnite sits at the top of our ranking. The game, which was launched in July 2017, has seen international success and has been played for 3.8 billion days!”
A quick, back-of-the-envelope calculation suggests the figure is plausible albeit high. Statista suggests there are currently around 350 million Fortnite players around the world. Dividing 3.8 billion days between 350 million players means an average of 10.8 continuous days spent Fortnite-ing. That’s 259.2 hours, which breaks down to 86.4 hours a year since Fortnite‘s launch — or 7.2 hours per month. Of course, stats like this will be swayed by some of the more extreme gamers, who will likely spend many, many times that playing Fortnite.
The report continues that, since August 2019, 1.289 billion hours of Fortnite gameplay has been streamed on Twitch. That makes it the most popular game on the platform.
Photo: Game.co.uk
Fortnite vs. Apple
At present, Fortnite developer Epic Games is locked in a battle with Apple. Hostilities commenced when Epic offered players the chance to buy in-app purchases for Fortnite via a direct-payment system. This was intended to cut Apple out of the process, depriving Cupertino of its regular 30% commission. Apple responded by removing Fortnite from the App Store. It also removed Epic’s developer account and all its other games.
Since then, the two have been battling back and forth. It will likely end up in court sometime next year unless an agreement is reached before then. For now, Fortnite can only be played by users who downloaded it before it was banned. For those who already have it on their iPhone, check out this guide on how to upgrade to iOS 14 without losing Fortnite.
