It's no secret that Fortnite from Epic Games is a hugely popular game, having broken into the mainstream and persisted as one of the world's most-played titles. But even though Fortnite is incredibly popular, some may still be surprised to learn that the battle royale is the most-played game in the world, with a staggering 10.4 million years of cumulative playtime, or 52 times the amount of time that human beings have existed on Earth.
This is according to a new report by UK retailer GAME, which sought to determine the most-played games. The report states that Fortnite is the most-played video game on the planet with 3.8 billion cumulative days played. The second most-played game is World of Warcraft, with 2.08 billion days played. Surprisingly, the mega-popular Grand Theft Auto 5 is only at 266 million days played.
However, there are various factors to take into account. Fortnite is available on far more platforms than the other games on the list, just recently having been removed from the Google Play and iOS App Stores. Not only that, but the Fortnite battle royale has been free-to-play since its launch, making it accessible to the widest number of players possible. Considering this, it's not all that surprising that people have spent significantly more time playing Fortnite than other games.
Grand Theft Auto 5, meanwhile, was only available on PS3 and Xbox 360 for a time, though eventually made its way to PC, PS4, and Xbox One. Recent promotions have allowed some to get Grand Theft Auto 5 for free, but generally, the game has been a premium product, greatly limiting its potential playerbase. Grand Theft Auto 5 is coming to PS5 and Xbox Series X at some point in 2021, though, so it still has a chance to keep racking up those numbers.
The report also looked to determine the game's that have the most Twitch streaming hours, and unsurprisingly, Fortnite took the top spot for that as well. According to the report, Fortnite has been streamed for over 1.2 billion cumulative hours since August 2019, with League of Legends getting the second spot at 712 million hours of streaming hours. Grand Theft Auto 5 performed a little better in this category, getting third place with 681 million hours of the game streamed on Twitch in the past year.
This results may not be all that surprising, but some may be surprised that Call of Duty didn't take one of the top spots. However, the likely explanation for that is that Activision releases a new Call of Duty game every year, and so a big chunk of the playerbase is constantly moving from one title to the next instead of sticking with the same game for years on end, as is the case with games like Fortnite.
Source: GAME