Yesterday, Fortnite made an aggressive move in hopes of re-engaging its player base.
Save your V-Bucks, this one’s on us. Everyone who completes 13 free Overtime Challenges by February 27 will receive the upcoming Season 8 Battle Pass for FREE! Jump in and #ShareTheLove now 💞 https://t.co/jktgU3wfx0 pic.twitter.com/EQnicqIj1y
— Fortnite (@FortniteGame) February 14, 2019
This is a clear response to the growing popularity of Apex Legends. Fortnite has always used challenges as a way to keep players coming back to the game. During a season, new challenges are released each week, which encourages gamers to play on a consistent basis. The free Battle Pass (~$10 value) is an aggressive move by Fortnite to bring as many players back to its game through the end of the month to stem Apex’s success. We think this could represent an “investment” of 10s of millions of dollars in foregone revenue.
In addition to the Overtime promotion, Fortnite made notable changes to the game this week that had been frustrating some of the top content creators of the game, most notably around planes, Zipline fall damage, and Rocket Launchers. Players have jokingly thanked Apex Legends for the Fortnite improvements, but it’s clear that Epic Games is reacting with a heavy hand to the explosion of Apex Legends. The competition between Fortnite and Apex is good for gamers.
We previously wrote about Wall Street’s Overreaction to Apex Legends, but want to re-iterate that Apex is a high-quality game that has staying power. Fortnite needs to do everything that it can to re-engage its player base soon or risk Apex rising to be an even larger, permanent competitor.
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