Less Than 4% of Fortnite Game Devs Make Over $20K Annually

In March 2023, Epic Games introduced a beta version of Unreal Editor for Fortnite (UEFN). Before this release, Fortnite users had limited abilities to make islands in the game. At that time, Epic Games promised to allocate 40% of the revenue from Fortnite store sales to devs who built islands using UEFN, with payouts based on island popularity and audience engagement.

At the recent GDC 2024, Epic Games revealed that they had paid $320 million over a year to users who crafted their own islands in Fortnite, and Games Analyst David Taylor delved into the distribution of this sum among developers.

According to Taylor, a total of 23.5 thousand devs fashioned their islands in Fortnite. 9 devs received 40% of the $320 million in payments, with these creators having crafted popular islands in Fortnite even before the UEFN launch.

The top 100 developers garnered 71% of the payments, and on a broader scale, the top 4000 developers received 99.7% of the payments. 40 developers earned over a million dollars in a year, with 6 surpassing $10 million, and one developer receiving over $20 million from Epic Games.

A mere 4% of island creators in Fortnite could potentially earn over $20,000 annually. By comparison, in Roblox, only 0.1% of developers achieve this, while on Steam, it stands at 15%.

You can check more data in Taylor's post on LinkedIn. Also, don't forget to join our 80 Level Talent platform and our Telegram channel and follow us on Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn, where we share breakdowns, the latest news, awesome artworks, and more.