There's no question Epic Games has struck gold with Fortnite, its third-person battle royale game. After being the most profitable video game in 2018 by a wide margin, and seeing the holiday season give further reason for fans to spend money on in-game items, the holiday hangover has hit the wallets of Epic Games pretty hard.

Fortnite saw a whopping 48% drop in revenue between December 2018 and January 2019. A brief downward trend was surely expected, given the peak of the holiday season resulting in more in-game purchases, but to see revenue nearly cut in half is staggering, especially for a game consistently as popular as Fortnite.

One likely reason for the revenue drop could be due to Season 7 starting to wrap up. While Season 8 of Fortnite will be arriving in a few days, most players who regularly pick up new battle passes every season had probably already done so in December, which is when Season 7 dropped for players.

Fortnite season 8 pirates

Even though Epic Games failed to repeat the success it saw towards the end of last year, it's not as though the company will be in dire needs anytime soon. Epic Games was able to make over $3 billion in profits last year, and with Fortnite being playable on virtually any device, the avenues of revenue are more open than they've ever been. Even with other competitors finishing and launching their respective battle royale games into the market, Fortnite has already established a large enough player base that could go unmatched for years to come.

As if there's already enough money to be made from Fortnite, Epic Games recently launched its own digital store on PC, called the Epic Games Store. The newest channel for people to buy digital games on their PCs allows developers to earn a larger share of revenue from consumer purchases. This more aggressive developer-friendly split in revenue has already seen a number of AAA games launching exclusively through the Epic Games Store, such as Ubisoft's The Division 2 in March.

Fortnite is available on Android, iOS, Mac, Nintendo Switch, PC, PlayStation 4, Windows, and Xbox One.

Source: TechCrunch