Epic Games released its first Fortnite ecosystem year in review for 2024, and it has a lot to celebrate.
Epic said Fortnite UEFN (Unreal Editor for Fortnite) paid out $324 million to creators in 2024. The number of creators in the ecosystem nearly tripled to 70,000, and they published more than 198,000 islands (games/experiences).
Those islands are getting traffic too, as nearly 60,000 islands were played per day on average. And 70+% of players play both creator-made games and Epic-made games like Battle Royale.
Average players in creator-made games was up annually across the board in 2024, with daily active players up 15%; total hours played up 5%. And there was meaningful growth in non-combat game genres.
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The creator community continues to grow at a great pace, with the number of creators nearly tripling from 24,000 in 2023 to 70,000 creators in 2024. The number of islands published also doubled to a total of 198,000 in 2024, including 137,000 islands created in UEFN.
While engagement varies monthly due to seasonality, the average number of players engaging with creator islands on a daily, monthly, and annual basis has increased across the board this year, with average daily players up 15% in 2024.
Epic said it’s been inspiring to see more creators succeeding in the Fortnite ecosystem. A total of $352 million was paid to creators in 2024, up 11% when measuring March-December time periods of 2023 to 2024.
In 2024, players spent 5.23 billion hours playing games made by creators—a number that represents 36.5% of total Fortnite playtime and continues to rise. This marks a 5% increase from the 4.98 billion hours in 2023.
These numbers are buoyed by meaningful growth in game genres that don’t feature combat, like social roleplay, party games, deathruns, and horror. So far in January 2025, this type of variety content has made up more than 30% of time spent in creator-made experiences, an increase of nearly 50% from the same time period last year.
New features and devices
In 2024, Epic improved the capabilities of what creators can build with UEFN with the launches of the First Person Camera device, new UI tools and HUD controls, Input Triggers, Proximity chat, Persistence, Custom NPCs, and many more impactful features.
In the Creator Portal, Epic rolled out new ways to understand a creator’s audience, with improvements to analytics and metrics about your payouts, your player base and the introduction of island satisfaction data. Epic also launched Creator Profiles to help players find all of relevant islands in one place, and Favorite a Creator to help you build audiences inside Fortnite.
Beloved IPs came to UEFN and Fortnite Creative in 2024, enabling you to create innovative games and experiences with official The LEGO Group, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and Fall Guys assets and gameplay devices. This initiative enables you to develop authentic commercial games using world class IP without getting lost in contracts or negotiations, and is enabled with a single agreement.
This year, Epic’s highlighted islands included the ARPG Fort Knight Legend by Love-is-Real, pushed the boundaries of Verse UI, Verse Persistence, and RPG elements to deliver a large and thrilling experience.
Another was Havoc Hotel 2 [Roguelike] by TeraCreators, which set the standard for roguelike PVE in Fortnite, blending Custom UI, RPG elements, and retention mechanics to engage players beyond roleplay and tycoon genres.
There was Lumberjack Heroes by ItsJacky, showcased the power of UEFN with its custom UI and engaging gameloop. The island’s depth of play inspired other creators to push the limits of Tycoon-style content.
And another popular one was Pizza Shop Tycoon Boss Fight Update! by TomJank, used TMNT templates, prefab, and devices to create an authentic and engaging Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles experience.
Lastly, Epic highlighted The Kraken: Bossfight by Gauntlet, a polished role-playing game (RPG) that took the community by storm. With engaging quests, exploration, dungeons, and an advanced boss fight, it sets a new standard for immersive gameplay.
Looking Ahead
As Epic looks ahead to 2025, it plans to unlock more possibilities for creators. Including moving Scene Graph into beta testing, introducing custom items, and launching additional tools to help creators build deeper, more complex games with UEFN in new and popular genres.
The company acknowledged it has improvements to make to UEFN and the creator experience. It said it is is committed to increasing stability, improving interaction times during development, giving creators insights and tools to sustain and grow a player base after launch, and making Discover the best representation of the wide variety of games available for players.
Later this month, Epic will update the public Fortnite creator roadmap to let creators know what other features and updates they can expect throughout the year. The company will discuss the roadmap in detail, along with deeper conversations, at Unreal Fest in Orlando, happening June 2 to June 5.
