Kratos is the main character of Santa Monica Studio's God of War series. He is a Spartan warrior who went from serving the gods of...
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Fortnite is the Epic Games franchise that started out as a co-op game about building forts to fight off zombies and turned into a free-to-play Battle Royale with a Battle Pass. Cliff Bleszinski revealed Fortnite at the 2011 Spike Video Game Awards. Fortnite: Save the World hit paid early access in July 2017, and Fortnite Battle Royale followed as a free mode that September. Fortnite has since grown into a platform that holds Battle Royale, Zero Build, Fortnite OG, Fortnite Reload, LEGO Fortnite, Fortnite Festival, Save the World, and thousands of player-made islands built in Unreal Editor for Fortnite.
This Fortnite franchise page covers the full history, from the Chapter 1 island that got sucked into a black hole all the way to Chapter 7. It also covers the Fortnite lore and live events, characters like Jonesy, Peely, Midas, and The Foundation, and the crossovers with Marvel, Star Wars, Halo, and Gears of War. The Fortnite World Cup is here too, along with the Epic Games fight with Apple and Google that kept Fortnite off phones for years.
Epic Games announced Fortnite at the Spike Video Game Awards in December 2011. Cliff Bleszinski, Epic's design director and the face of the Gears of War series, introduced it on stage. The pitch was a colorful co-op game where players scavenged during the day and built forts to survive monster attacks at night. That was a big swerve for a studio that had just wrapped up the Gears of War trilogy on Xbox 360.
Fortnite then disappeared into a long development cycle. Bleszinski left Epic in 2012, the same year Tencent bought roughly a 40 percent stake in the company. That investment pushed Epic toward games as a service, and Fortnite became the test case. Epic also moved the game over to Unreal Engine 4, and People Can Fly, the Polish studio behind Bulletstorm that Epic owned at the time, worked on Fortnite alongside Epic Games in Cary, North Carolina.
Fortnite: Save the World launched in paid early access on July 25, 2017, on PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One. The setup has a mysterious Storm wiping out 98 percent of humanity and filling the world with monsters called Husks. Players lead a group of Heroes split into Soldier, Constructor, Ninja, and Outlander classes, building defenses around objectives and pushing back the Storm with a device called the Atlas. The campaign moves through four zones: Stonewood, Plankerton, Canny Valley, and Twine Peaks.
Epic originally planned to make Save the World free in 2018, then delayed it, then dropped the idea entirely when the mode left early access in June 2020. Save the World stayed a paid mode for almost nine years while Battle Royale ate up all the attention. That finally changed on April 16, 2026, when Save the World went free-to-play on PC, PlayStation, Xbox, and cloud, and launched on Nintendo Switch 2 the same day. Epic paused new purchases a month before the switch, and existing owners got bonus rewards. Save the World still isn't playable on the original Nintendo Switch or on mobile.
Fortnite Battle Royale launched for free on September 26, 2017, on PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One. Epic built the mode in about two months after PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds took off, and PUBG Corp publicly complained that Fortnite was copying its game. That complaint had an extra edge because PUBG ran on Epic's own Unreal Engine.
The basic format is 100 players jumping out of the Battle Bus onto an island while the Storm closes in. The difference from PUBG was building. A player under fire could throw up walls, ramps, and full towers out of wood, brick, and metal, and that one mechanic gave Fortnite a skill ceiling and a look that nothing else in the genre had. The cartoon art style and the free price tag did the rest. Fortnite hit iOS in April 2018, Nintendo Switch in June 2018, and Android in August 2018, and Sony finally allowed crossplay on PlayStation 4 that September after holding out for months.
Fortnite Battle Royale runs in seasons that last about two to three months, grouped into chapters. A new chapter usually means a brand new island, and the jump between chapters is almost always tied to a live event.
Chapter 1 ran from the Battle Royale launch in 2017 through Season X in October 2019. The original island had spots like Pleasant Park, Retail Row, Tilted Towers, and Dusty Depot, and Epic changed the map through story beats instead of patch notes. The Battle Pass arrived in Season 2. A meteor flattened Dusty Depot into Dusty Divot at the start of Season 4, and that season ended with a rocket launch that tore cracks in the sky.
Kevin the Cube rolled around the island during Season 6 before dissolving into Loot Lake. Season X brought back old locations through the Zero Point and The Visitor's plan, and the whole thing ended with The End event on October 13, 2019. A rocket strike pulled the entire map into a black hole that sat on screen for almost two days while players stared at it.
Fortnite Chapter 2 launched on October 15, 2019, with a new island plus swimming, fishing, and boats. Season 2 introduced Midas and the spy war between Ghost and Shadow. The Device event in June 2020 flooded the map for Season 3, and Season 4, the Nexus War, brought in Marvel heroes and ended with players fighting Galactus.
Season 5 put Jonesy at the center of the Zero Point story, with Agent Jones recruiting Hunters like The Mandalorian, Kratos, and Master Chief. Season 7 brought an alien invasion and Doctor Slone of the Imagined Order into the spotlight. Chapter 2 closed out with the Cube Queen in Season 8 and The End event on December 4, 2021, which flipped the island upside down.
Chapter 3 started on December 5, 2021, with the Flipped island and Spider-Man in the Battle Pass. The Foundation, voiced by Dwayne Johnson, became a main character in the Zero Point story. Season 2 opened with building removed from Battle Royale and launched Zero Build as a permanent mode in March 2022. Season 3 added Darth Vader, and Season 4 brought the Chrome, a liquid metal invasion that ate the island during the Fracture event on December 3, 2022.
Chapter 4 moved Fortnite to Unreal Engine 5.1 in December 2022. Season 2 added the neon Mega City and Attack on Titan, Season 3 went into the jungle with Optimus Prime, and Season 4 was a heist season built around Kado Thorne. Epic then ran Fortnite OG in November 2023, bringing the original Chapter 1 island back, and the chapter wrapped with The Big Bang event on December 2, 2023, headlined by Eminem.
Chapter 5 started in December 2023 with the Underground season, which added Peter Griffin from Family Guy and the shadowy Society. LEGO Fortnite, Rocket Racing, and Fortnite Festival all launched within that first week. Season 2, Myths and Mortals, went Greek with Zeus and Hades, and Season 3, Wrecked, turned the island into a wasteland. Season 4 was Absolute Doom with Doctor Doom, and Fortnite Remix closed the chapter in November 2024 with a remixed Chapter 2 island and a concert finale featuring Snoop Dogg, Eminem, Ice Spice, and a Juice WRLD tribute.
Chapter 6 launched on December 1, 2024, with Hunters, a Japan-inspired island where Godzilla showed up. Season 2, Lawless, was another heist season. Galactic Battle followed as a Star Wars mini-season in May 2025, then Super and Shock 'N Awesome ran through the summer and fall. Chapter 6 ended with a Simpsons mini-season in November 2025 that dropped Springfield onto the map. Fortnite also arrived on Nintendo Switch 2 at launch on June 5, 2025.
Chapter 7 kicked off on November 29, 2025, with Pacific Break, a West Coast island themed around Los Angeles and Hollywood. Kill Bill and Back to the Future both got collabs, and Epic reworked how players drop into a match. Showdown followed on March 19, 2026, then Runners in June, then Override on August 20, 2026. Override puts Geno, the founder of the Imagined Order, in control of the Zero Point.
Fortnite turned one-time live events into a regular part of the game. The Season 4 rocket launch in June 2018 was the first big one, and every major story beat since has played out live with players watching from inside the match. Epic also figured out that the same setup worked for concerts.
Marshmello played a set at Pleasant Park in February 2019, and Epic reported 10.7 million players attended. Travis Scott's Astronomical in April 2020 drew 12.3 million concurrent players for the first show, according to Epic, and Ariana Grande's Rift Tour followed in August 2021. The Galactus event that ended the Nexus War in December 2020 hit 15.3 million concurrent players, which still stands as the highest figure Epic has reported for any Fortnite live event. Remix: The Finale in November 2024 reached 14.3 million, the highest concert figure in Fortnite. On the story side, The End events for Chapter 1 and Chapter 2, the Fracture, and The Big Bang are the moments people still bring up when talking about Fortnite lore.
The Fortnite story revolves around the Zero Point, an energy source at the center of the island that holds reality together. Everyone on the island is stuck in The Loop, which is why players respawn match after match and forget everything when they do. The whole Battle Royale is basically a time loop, and most of the story is about characters trying to escape it or control it.
The Imagined Order, founded by Geno and run for years by Doctor Slone, built The Loop to contain the Zero Point. The Seven are the group fighting against them, made up of The Visitor, The Scientist, The Paradigm, The Foundation, The Origin, The Imagined, and The Order. Jonesy ends up in the middle of it as Agent Jones in Chapter 2, working for the IO before turning on them. The Cube Queen and her Last Reality cubes, the Chrome, and the Society all spin out from that same core conflict over the Zero Point.
Jonesy is the default skin and the closest thing Fortnite has to a main character, with dozens of versions across the chapters. Peely, the walking banana, and Fishstick are fan favorites that keep getting new styles. Midas, the gold-touch leader of Ghost from Chapter 2, became one of the most requested characters after his story ended, which is why Epic keeps bringing him back.
The Foundation is the leader of The Seven. His mask came off during The End, the Chapter 2 finale in December 2021, and that reveal confirmed Dwayne Johnson as the character. Meowscles, the buff cat agent from Chapter 2, Drift and Raven from Chapter 1, and Kado Thorne from Chapter 4 round out the cast that people search for most often.
Fortnite stopped being one game a while ago. Zero Build arrived in March 2022 for players who wanted Battle Royale without building. Fortnite Reload launched in 2024 as a smaller, faster mode where squads can keep respawning, and Fortnite OG became permanent in December 2024, cycling through the original Chapter 1 seasons.
LEGO Fortnite launched in December 2023 as a survival crafting game built with the LEGO Group, and it later grew into LEGO Fortnite Odyssey and LEGO Fortnite Brick Life. Fortnite Festival comes from Harmonix, the Rock Band studio Epic bought in 2021. Festival's Main Stage plays like Rock Band with licensed songs, and Jam Stage lets players mix song parts together in a social space. Those two are the parts of Festival still in the game.
Not every mode survived the 2026 cuts. Ballistic, a tactical first-person shooter mode that launched in December 2024, went offline on April 16, 2026. Festival Battle Stage, the competitive elimination mode inside Fortnite Festival, was removed the same day. Rocket Racing from Psyonix, the Rocket League studio, launched in December 2023 and was switched off on October 1, 2026. Epic said all three failed to hold onto a large enough player base, and vehicle cosmetics from Rocket Racing still work in other modes.
Fortnite Creative launched in December 2018 as a sandbox where players could build their own islands and game modes. Epic took that much further in March 2023 with Unreal Editor for Fortnite, a version of Unreal Engine that lets creators build islands with their own assets and code them using Epic's Verse programming language.
Epic pays creators through an engagement payout system funded by a share of Fortnite's net revenue from the Item Shop and other purchases. That's why a huge chunk of what people play in Fortnite now isn't made by Epic at all, from horror maps and tycoon games to boxfights and deathruns.
Fortnite runs natively on Windows PC, PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, Nintendo Switch 2, iOS, and Android, with crossplay across all of them. Cloud versions are available through Xbox Cloud Gaming and GeForce Now.
Mac is the odd one out. The native macOS client is frozen at version 13.40 from Chapter 2, Season 3, because Apple cut off Epic's developer access during the 2020 lawsuit, so it hasn't received any modern seasons or updates. Playing current Fortnite on a Mac means going through cloud gaming.
The first big Fortnite crossover was the Avengers: Infinity War mode in May 2018, which let players grab the Infinity Gauntlet and turn into Thanos. That opened the floodgates. Marvel took over an entire season with the Nexus War, and Spider-Man headlined the Chapter 3 Battle Pass. Star Wars showed up for an in-game Rise of Skywalker event with J.J. Abrams in December 2019, and later got its own Galactic Battle mini-season.
Xbox fans got Master Chief from Halo and Marcus Fenix and Kait Diaz from Gears of War, which brings things full circle given that Cliff Bleszinski introduced Fortnite back in 2011. Batman and the rest of DC have been in the game since 2019. Stranger Things, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Godzilla, The Simpsons, Kill Bill, and Back to the Future have all had their turn too.
The Fortnite story spilled into comics with Batman/Fortnite: Zero Point from DC in 2021, a six-issue series where Batman gets trapped in The Loop and works with the island's characters to get out. Marvel followed with Fortnite x Marvel: Zero War in 2022. Both series tie directly into the Zero Point lore and came with codes for in-game cosmetics.
The LEGO partnership also crossed over into physical sets, with LEGO Fortnite builds like the Battle Bus and the Supply Llama hitting shelves in 2024.
Epic held the Fortnite World Cup at Arthur Ashe Stadium in New York in July 2019 with a $30 million prize pool. Kyle "Bugha" Giersdorf won the solo final at 16 years old and took home $3 million, which made him a household name overnight. The World Cup never came back in that form, and Epic shifted competitive Fortnite to the Fortnite Champion Series, known as the FNCS. Peterbot and Pollo won the 2024 FNCS Global Championship, and the series has continued through 2026 with regional Majors and a Global Championship each year.
On August 13, 2020, Epic added a direct payment option to Fortnite on iOS and Android that skipped the 30 percent cut Apple and Google take from in-app purchases. Both companies pulled Fortnite from their stores the same day. Epic sued both within hours and released Nineteen Eighty-Fortnite, a parody of Apple's famous 1984 Super Bowl ad.
The cases went in different directions. A jury sided with Epic against Google in December 2023. The Apple case mostly went Apple's way in 2021 except for a ruling on steering players toward outside payments, and a 2025 contempt ruling against Apple finally cleared the path for Fortnite to return to the US App Store in May 2025. Fortnite came back to the Google Play Store on March 19, 2026. Separately, Epic agreed to pay $520 million in December 2022 to settle Federal Trade Commission claims over children's privacy and purchase designs that led to unwanted charges, with $245 million going to refunds for Fortnite players.
2026 has been a rough year behind the scenes. Epic raised V-Bucks prices in March, cutting the $8.99 bundle from 1,000 V-Bucks down to 800. On March 24, 2026, Tim Sweeney announced that Epic was laying off more than 1,000 employees, pointing to a drop in Fortnite engagement that started in 2025. That announcement is also where the shutdowns of Ballistic, Festival Battle Stage, and Rocket Racing came from.
The bright spot is that Save the World finally went free in April, and Fortnite is back on both major mobile stores. The Disney partnership is the part still up in the air. Disney bought a $1.5 billion stake in Epic Games in February 2024 to build a persistent world connected to Fortnite with characters from Disney, Pixar, Marvel, Star Wars, and Avatar. Epic president Adam Sussman said after the March layoffs that the vision hadn't changed. Then in October 2026, Bloomberg reported that Epic had delayed the first Disney game, a shooter with Marvel and Star Wars characters, so it could be rebuilt as an "AI first" production. Tim Sweeney called it a huge pivot toward AI across the company, and Epic hasn't given a new launch date.
Kratos is the main character of Santa Monica Studio's God of War series. He is a Spartan warrior who went from serving the gods of...
Fortnite: Save the World launched in paid early access on July 25, 2017, and Fortnite Battle Royale launched for free on September 26, 2017.
Epic Games develops and publishes Fortnite. People Can Fly helped develop Save the World, and Harmonix makes Fortnite Festival.
Battle Royale, Zero Build, Fortnite OG, Fortnite Reload, LEGO Fortnite, Fortnite Festival Main Stage and Jam Stage, Save the World, and Creative islands are all free. Ballistic and Rocket Racing have been shut down.
Yes. Save the World was a paid mode from its 2017 early access launch until April 16, 2026, when it went free-to-play and launched on Nintendo Switch 2. It isn't available on the original Switch or mobile.
Only through cloud gaming. The native Mac client is stuck at version 13.40 from Chapter 2, Season 3, and hasn't received updates since Apple cut off Epic's developer access in 2020.
The Galactus event in December 2020 drew 15.3 million concurrent players, the highest figure Epic has reported. Remix: The Finale reached 14.3 million in November 2024, a record for a Fortnite concert.
The End event on October 13, 2019, pulled the entire Chapter 1 island into a black hole that stayed on screen for almost two days before Chapter 2 launched with a new map.
The Zero Point is the energy source at the center of the Fortnite island that holds reality together. The Imagined Order built The Loop to contain it, which is why players keep respawning.
Dwayne Johnson plays The Foundation, revealed when the character's mask came off during The End, the Chapter 2 finale in December 2021.
Yes. Fortnite returned to the US App Store in May 2025 after being removed in August 2020 during the Epic Games lawsuit against Apple.
Kyle "Bugha" Giersdorf won the 2019 Fortnite World Cup solo final at 16 years old and took home $3 million.
Epic shut down Rocket Racing on October 1, 2026, citing low player engagement. Ballistic and Festival Battle Stage were removed earlier, on April 16, 2026.