Fortnite Made A Truly Ridiculous Amount Of Money In Its First Two Years

Throughout Fortnite's history, we've known that the game has been a major money maker for Epic Games without knowing much in the way of specifics. Epic, after all, is a private company, so it typically doesn't disclose how much it or its games are making publicly. With Epic embroiled in a court battle with Apple at the moment, we're learning details that were previously kept under wraps, including how much money Fortnite pulled in during its meteoric rise to success.

As it turns out, Fortnite made a ton of money in its first two years of availability. According to once-confidential financial results for 2018 and 2019 that have now been made public because of Epic's legal dispute with Apple (as published by The Verge), Fortnite pulled in a whopping $9 billion in revenue in its first two years after launch.

More specifically, Fortnite made $5.477 billion in 2018 and $3.709 billion in 2019 for a grand total of $9.186 billion over those two years. Keep in mind that this revenue, which means we're not sure how much money the game made after expenses were taken into account. Still, it's a staggering number that shows us just how successful the free-to-play battle royale game was in 2018 and 2019.

To put that in perspective, Epic says that it made $108 million in revenue from other games in same period of time, noting that the other revenue comes primarily from Rocket League and Battle Breakers. Epic purchased Rocket League developer Psyonix in 2019, so that's probably where most of that additional revenue is coming from.

So, if you were ever wondering where Epic got the money it needed to launch a game store and pay for a bunch of PC exclusives, your answer is undoubtedly Fortnite and the billions it pulled in during its first two years of availability. We'll have more details about Epic and Apple's legal battle as it rages on, so stay tuned for more.