Fortnite Battle Royale
The idea for "Fortnite Battle Royale" arose following the release of the similar battle royale game "PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds", which saw numerous player count records broken throughout 2017. Seeing its rapid growth and commercial success, Epic Games saw the opportunity to create a battle royale mode of their own. Originally released as part of the paid "Fortnite" game, Epic spun out a dedicated version of the game offered as free-to-play funded by microtransactions, sharing in-game currency with the main "Fortnite" game, allowing players to buy or earn cosmetic items to customize their character, as well as completing challenges through a battle pass to earn additional rewards. , the game has seen over 200 million players, and has been estimated to have earned in microtransactions. "Fortnite Battle Royale" has become a cultural phenomenon, with streams of the game achieving record-high viewerships, and with several high-profile celebrities stating their appreciation of the game.
Battle pass
The popularity of battle passes grew in 2018 with the use in Epic Games's "Fortnite Battle Royale", which released in September 2017. The free-to-play "Fortnite Battle Royale" adopted a "season"-driven release schedule, each season lasting 10 weeks, during which they offered a new set of cosmetic items and emotes. The battle pass approach was added starting in its second season, during a time when the game was seeing a large growth in its player base, and has been used by the game since. Battle passes are purchased through an in-game currency (V-bucks) which either must be purchased with real-world funds via microtransactions, or earned via the "Fortnite: Save the World" cooperative game mode. Analyst Michael Pachter estimated that on the first day of the third season, in February 2018, Epic sold more than five million battle passes, generating over in revenue in a single day. With expansion of "Fortnite" to mobile devices in March 2018, revenue estimates from the game were in the hundreds of millions of dollars per month in the following months, primarily from battle pass sales.