View source for Fortnite

{{Short description|2017 online battle royale video game}}
{{Infobox video game
| title = Fortnite
| developer = Epic Games
| engine = Unreal Engine
| platforms = Windows, macOS, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and later others
| released = July 25, 2017 (''Save the World'', paid early access); September 26, 2017 (''Battle Royale'')
| genre = Survival, battle royale
| modes = Single-player, multiplayer
}}
'''''Fortnite''''' is an online video game made by Epic Games. It was first sold in paid early access on July 25, 2017, as ''Save the World'', a cooperative game in which players gather materials, build forts and defend them against waves of monsters. Its best known form is ''Fortnite Battle Royale'', a free mode released on September 26, 2017, in which up to 100 players parachute onto an island and fight until one player or one squad is left.<ref name="wp">{{cite web |url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fortnite_Battle_Royale |title=Fortnite Battle Royale |website=Wikipedia |access-date=2026-10-25}}</ref> More than 350 million accounts had been registered by May 2020.

In 2022 [[Molecular Reality Corporation]] proposed a "battle-royale mode a la Fortnite" for its game ''[[Maxine's Quest]]''.

== Battle Royale ==
The studio built the mode in about two months, beginning in July 2017, with help from the team behind its ''Unreal Tournament'' games. Its developers said they "loved Battle Royale games like" ''PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds'', which had entered early access in March 2017. It first meant to include the mode in the paid game and released it as a separate free game about two weeks before launch.<ref name="wp" />

Each player lands with a pickaxe and nothing else. Nearly every object on the island can be broken down into wood, stone or metal, and those materials become walls, ramps, floors and roofs, which a player can put up in the middle of a gunfight. A storm closes in over the course of a match, shrinking the safe area to the "eye of a storm", and players caught outside it lose health until they die or get back in. Players can enter alone or in squads of two, three or four. During development the designers aimed for matches lasting no longer than 25 minutes.<ref name="wp" />

The genre takes its name from ''Battle Royale'', a 1999 Japanese novel by Koushun Takami, and the 2000 film made from it by Kinji Fukasaku, in which a class of schoolchildren is left on an island and made to fight until one survives.

== Players ==
''Battle Royale'' had more than 10 million players within two weeks of its release, more than 45 million by March 2018 and more than 125 million by June 2018, when about 40 million played each month.<ref name="wp" /> The island also became a venue. A concert by the DJ Marshmello in February 2019 was attended by more than 10 million players, and later concerts, by Travis Scott among others, drew audiences of millions.

== Molecular Reality Corporation ==
[[File:Maxines Quest screenshot.webp|thumb|The arena of ''Maxine's Quest'' in 2026. The game is for one player.]]
The December 2022 overview of [[Molecular Reality Corporation]] describes ''Maxine's Quest'' as a set of games run on the company's [[nanopore]] console, in which "the number of 'spikes' (brief changes in current caused by analytes transiting a pore) determine how many enemies appear". It continues: "Games will be solo player, player vs. player, and battle-royale mode a la Fortnite."<ref name="dis22">{{cite web |title=Scientific and technical overview |publisher=Molecular Reality Corporation |date=December 2022}}</ref> In ''Fortnite'' all 100 players share one island. In ''Maxine's Quest'' the enemies on each player's screen are generated by the molecules passing through that player's own pore.

''Fortnite'' and ''[[FarmVille]]'' are the only video games released after 1985 that the company's documents of that year name as influences; the rest come from the years of the [[Atari 2600]] and the arcade.<ref name="early">{{cite web |title=Early Releases on Maxine's Quest |publisher=Molecular Reality Corporation |year=2022}}</ref> The battle-royale mode was not built. The version of ''Maxine's Quest'' playable in 2026 is for one player, whose monsters are drawn from recorded nanopore signals.<ref name="ludicious">{{cite news |title=Maxine's Quest Review: The Monsters Are Real Current Spikes |work=Ludicious |author=Pixel Marchetti |date=2026-06-02 |url=/press/ludicious/2026/06/02/maxines-quest-review}}</ref>

== See also ==
* [[Experigaming]]
* [[List of unrealized Molecular Reality Corporation projects]]
* [[List of works that inspired Molecular Reality Corporation]]

== References ==
{{Reflist}}

[[Category:2017 video games]]
[[Category:Battle royale games]]
[[Category:Unreal Engine games]]