What Is Fortnite?

What you actually play

Battle Royale is the mode that made Fortnite famous. Players parachute from the Battle Bus, scavenge weapons and items, and fight while a storm shrinks the safe area, until one player or squad is left. Zero Build is the same mode without building.

Save the World is where Fortnite started: a paid co-operative mode where you build forts and defend them against waves of enemies. It is still in the game.

Beyond those, Fortnite hosts islands made by other players and studios with Epic's creator tools — deathruns, box fights, tycoons, horror maps and much more. Each has a code you can enter in-game, and the most-played change daily.

Is Fortnite free?

Yes. Battle Royale and player-made islands cost nothing to play. Epic makes its money from cosmetics — skins, emotes, pickaxes and the like — bought with V-Bucks, the in-game currency, plus the battle pass and the Fortnite Crew subscription.

Cosmetics are purely visual. Nothing you can buy makes you stronger in a match, which is why the item shop is a fashion catalogue rather than an upgrade store.

Who made Fortnite, and who owns it?

Fortnite is developed and published by Epic Games, the studio behind Unreal Engine, headquartered in Cary, North Carolina. Epic was founded by Tim Sweeney, who is still its CEO.

Epic is a private company. Tim Sweeney is its controlling shareholder, and Tencent holds a large minority stake. Other companies, including Sony and Disney, have invested since — but none of them owns Fortnite.

What does the name mean?

Fortnite is a play on "fortnight", the British word for two weeks. The name is usually explained by the original game's premise: building forts and holding out against the storm, night after night.

So if you were wondering how long a fortnite is — the word you want is fortnight, and it's fourteen days. Fortnite the game has no fixed length; a Battle Royale match lasts around twenty minutes if you make it to the end.

Common questions