Epic Games has released its first Fortnite Ecosystem Year in Review for 2024, and it has a lot to celebrate.
Epic reported that the 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 published more than 198,000 islands (games/experiences).
Even on these islands there is traffic, as on average almost 60,000 islands were played per day. And more than 70% of players play games created by creators as well as epic games like Battle Royale.
The average number of players in creator-created games increased annually in 2024, with daily active players growing by 15%; the total number of hours played by 5%. And there has been significant 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 published islands has also doubled to a total of 198,000 in 2024, including 137,000 islands created in UEFN.
While engagement varies each month due to seasonality, the average number of players engaging with Creator Islands daily, monthly and annually increased overall this year, with average daily players up 15% in 2024.
Epic said it’s inspiring to see more creators succeeding in the Fortnite ecosystem. A total of $352 million was paid to creators in 2024, an increase of 11% when measuring the March-December 2023 to 2024 time periods.
In 2024, gamers spent 5.23 billion hours playing creator-created games – a number that represents 36.5% of Fortnite’s total playtime and growing. This represents a 5% increase from 4.98 billion hours in 2023.
These numbers are fueled by meaningful growth in non-combat game genres such as social roleplay, party games, deathruns, and horror. So far in January 2025, this type of diverse content has accounted for more than 30% of time spent in creator-created experiences, up nearly 50% from the same period last year.
New features and facilities
In 2024, Epic enhanced the possibilities of what creators can create with UEFN, introducing a First Person Camera, new UI tools and HUD controls, entry triggers, proximity chat, persistence, custom NPCs, and many other impressive features.
On the creator portal, Epic introduced new ways to understand the creator audience, with improvements to analytics and metrics related to your payouts, your player base, and the introduction of island satisfaction data. Epic has also launched Creator Profiles to help players find all relevant islands in one place, and Favorite Creators to help you build your Fortnite audience.
Beloved IPs come to UEFN and Fortnite Creative in 2024, allowing you to create innovative games and experiences with official gaming devices from The LEGO Group, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Fall Guys. This initiative allows you to develop authentic commercial games using world-class IP without getting lost in contracts or negotiations, and is made possible by a single agreement.
This year, Epic Islands featured Love-is-Real’s ARPG Fort Knight Legend, which pushed the boundaries of Verse UI, Verse Persistence and RPG elements to deliver a grand and exciting experience.
Next was TeraCreators’ Havoc Hotel 2 (Roguelike), which set the standard for roguelike PVE in Fortnite, combining a custom UI, RPG elements, and retention mechanics to engage players outside of the roleplay and tycoon genres.
There was Lumberjack Heroes by ItsJacky, which showcased the power of UEFN with its custom UI and engaging gameloop. The island’s depth of gameplay has inspired other creators to push the limits of Tycoon-style content.
And another popular update was Pizza Shop Tycoon Boss Fight! by TomJank, used TMNT templates, prefabs and props to create an authentic and engaging Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles experience.
Finally, Epic picked up Gauntlet’s The Kraken: Bossfight, a polished role-playing game (RPG) that took the community by storm. With engaging quests, exploration, dungeons and advanced boss fights, it sets a new standard for immersive gameplay.
Looking ahead
As Epic looks ahead to 2025, it plans to unlock more options for creators. Including moving the Scene Graph into beta testing, introducing custom items, and launching other tools to help creators create deeper and more complex games with UEFN in new and popular genres.
The company acknowledged that improvements needed to be made to UEFN and creators. It said it is committed to increasing stability, improving interaction time during development, providing developers with statistics and tools to maintain and grow the player base after launch, and making Discover the best representation of the wide variety of games available to players.
Later this month, Epic will update Fortnite’s public developer roadmap to let creators know what additional features and updates to expect throughout the year. The company will discuss the plan in detail along with more in-depth talks at Unreal Fest in Orlando, which will be held from June 2nd to June 5th.
