Fortnite’s Shrinking Circle: Drivers Behind the Decline📉
Fortnite launched Chapter 2 Season 2 on February 20, but sources report that its player base continues to decline on PC & console platforms. For mobile, where there exists better public data, there has been a very clear decline in both downloads and revenue over the past couple of years:
Source: Sensor Tower (Feb. 2020)
Our hypothesis is that players are spending time away from Fortnite’s ecosystem in favor of other shooters. Not only relatively newer games like Apex Legends and Escape from Tarkov, but older games like CS:GO seem to be making a comeback based on Twitch viewership data:
Source: TwitchTracker.com (Feb. 2020)
While the market for shooters seems to be at an all time high (e.g., last year’s Call of Duty: Modern Warfare broke numerous sales records), structurally the competitive dynamics of the shooter market remain tough for a number of reasons.
While shooters have various differences in style and flavor, the fundamental controls (i.e., learning how to move, aim, and shoot) comprise a skillset that can be much more easily transferrable across games within the genre. In contrast, for a game like League of Legends, in which players must intimately learn the timing and execution of up to ~150 champions’ unique set of abilities, there exists stronger barriers to exit for its player base.
Additionally, many battle royale games have been sorely lacking meaningfully deep progression and metagame systems, and Fortnite is no exception. The thin veneer of battle pass systems is losing its luster as games like Escape from Tarkov, which employs more complex rules to vary player incentives session to session, are beginning to steal the limelight.
Over the next several weeks, we plan to dive deeper on this complex topic as a multi-part series of blog posts, the first of which may be found in the section below. Stay tuned!
The Future of Battle Royale (Part I) 🔫
The battle royale genre has had a huge impact on gaming in the last few years. From Fortnite to Apex Legends to Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, the battle royale market has emerged as one of the leading genres in gaming today. However, its success has also surfaced key longterm problems. Battle royale games face three critical issues that need to be addressed if they want continue to dominate the gaming space:
- They need to move beyond purely vanity rewards as a driver for players
- They need to have more features that players engage with in the core loop
- They need to showcase multiple types of gameplay
Over the next few weeks, we’ll go through each of these recommendations one by one and show examples from other games that would work well in the battle royale genre.
For a detailed breakdown of (1) above, check out Jeff’s full blog post here.
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