In a move that should surprise nobody, Fortnite had the most watched trailer on YouTube this year. The Fortnite Season 5 reveal trailer garnered nearly 50 million YouTube views, making it the most watched video game trailer of 2018.
Gamesindustry.biz discovered the reality of our Fortnite-clogged gaming arteries in their “year in numbers” feature. Fortnite Season 5 “worlds collide” began in mid-July. The announce trailer followed up on the mysterious rifts that occurred throughout Fortnite in Season 4, and introduced players to the new golf cart vehicle.
The next two trailers on their list were also Fortnite trailers. The Port-a-Fort trailer had 35 million views, and the Playground Mode trailer garnered 34 million views. Fortnite appears again at the ninth spot with 19.5 million views for the Season 5 battle pass trailer. Other big games like Red Dead Redemption 2 show up, and we see three trailers from Clash of Clans/Clash Royale on the list.
Fortnite has dominated the gaming landscape since late last year, after picking up where PUBG left off. Epic Games’ battle royale title has over 200 million registered users, and hit a concurrent player count of 8.3 million. The game continued to dominate, as it was the most covered game of 2018 with nearly 70,000 articles published. It was also the top game on Twitter, demolishing everything but Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 as it went.
According to Fancensus, the top influencers were all largely Fortnite players. BCC Trolling, Ali-A, Ninja, Lachlan, and Muselk ranked at the top of that list. Each of those channels garnered over 1 billion views individually this year.
Fortnite has become an immense and dominating force in the video game industry. The game’s success allowed Epic Games to pay content creators on the Unreal Marketplace better, and the company recently opened a digital distribution service. Fortnite has become Epic’s Trojan Horse, and its popularity has allowed the company to venture in new directions without sacrifice.
