Fortnite release date: When did Battle Royale come out?

Gaming Writer

Publish Date: November 20, 2025

If anyone is looking for the Fortnite release date, they have come to the right place. However, the answer is not as straightforward as people might expect. “Fortnite” typically refers to the battle royale, but it’s so much more than that, and at the outset, it wasn’t that at all. It began as a PvE zombie game called Fornite: Save the World, before starting a battle royale mode and then adding several other modes, including Creative, in the years after. So what is Fortnite’s release date?

Fortnite release date explored

Fortnite officially released as Save the World on July 25, 2017. On September 26, 2017, the Battle Royale was officially released. However, the Battle Royale mode had a closed beta starting in the fall of 2015, so it was technically out and playable prior to that. Additionally, Save the World had an alpha in December 2014, as well as its own closed beta at the same time as Battle Royale.

If anyone is wondering about the Creative mode release date, that was December 6, 2018. It didn’t take long for Creative mode to drop. Then, on March 22, 2023, UEFN (Unreal Editor Fortnite) dropped, which has colloquially been dubbed Creative 2.0. Battle Royale Zero Build was added on March 29, 2022.

A few new modes had their release date on December 8, 2023:

Rocket Racing
LEGO Fortnite
Fortnite Festival

Since then, several other modes have had release dates, too. Reload dropped on June 22, 2024. Fortnite OG became a full mode on December 6, 2024. Blitz Royale was added on June 18, 2025. While it all really began in 2017, the game has undergone massive changes since then. If someone played it in 2017 and then not again until now, they’d be stunned at how almost unrecognizable it’s become.

Fortnite changes since initial launch

Graphics

The graphics now versus those in 2017 are very different. Just take a look below to see two different images from 2017 and 2025. Trees are much more detailed now, and the landscapes are much more diverse. The changes, however, have been subtle. There’s been no major graphical leap from one point to another, although one could argue that going from Chapter 4 to Chapter 5 really propelled it forward.

Epic Games

Slowly but surely, Epic Games has made sure to keep tweaking the graphics so they continue to look good, and it has subtly transformed how this game looks. The art style is the same, but it looks very different now.

Mechanics

The mechanics have also changed. There was no mantling, sliding, wall kicking, barrel rolling, or tactical sprinting. Players essentially had to walk everywhere in the original seasons, and slowly. It’s a wonder the game survived, given how challenging that made traversing the island. If anyone was on the opposite side of the safe zone, they had no time to waste. Chapter 3 introduced sliding, sprinting, and mantling, and a few others have been added since.

Movement

On that same note, there was virtually no movement. Nowadays, players fill their loadouts with at least some form of movement, but that wasn’t the case back in the day. There weren’t even shockwave grenades, just launch pads shortly after the game dropped. Now, there are throwable movement items, cars are drivable, and there are special, movement-specific items like the grappling hook.

Gameplay

The gameplay has significantly changed, too. Someone who was good in 2017 would not necessarily be good at the game in 2025. Building is the biggest example of that. At some point, people started “cranking 90s,” as they say, and the game changed forever. Building a one-by-one quickly and editing a window to shoot out of was a high-skill behavior in Chapter 1. Now, players will get eliminated if they don’t build a massive tower ramping over to a player they can edit on and shoot.

Aesthetic

Most of those things don’t have much to do with what the game looks like now, at least not physically. The way the game looks, as in what it resembles, is different, as is the graphical appearance. But the aesthetic of the game has totally changed, too. The current season is a perfect example of that. In Chapters 1, 2, and even 3, the idea of a collaborative map would’ve been a foreign concept.

Collaborations totally changed the game. There used to be players running around wearing The Reaper, Black Knight, Renegade Raider, Skull Trooper, Carbide, Omega, Crackshot, Double Helix, and Dusk. Now, players cannot go a game without seeing Homer Simpson, Chief Hopper, Mr. Incredible, Captain Hook, Superman, Batman, Spider-Man, Kratos, Solid Snake, Deadpool, Thanos, Darth Vader, Luke Skywalker, Kylo Ren, The Joker, Wonder Woman, The Flash, Bruno Mars, Leon S. Kennedy, The Weeknd, Sabrina Carpenter, Shohei Ohtani, Snoop Dogg, Ninja, Ali-A, Travis Scott, or LeBron James. And that’s not even remotely close to the amount of collabs in the game.

Original skins have almost entirely gone by the wayside, and some “original” skins are just mashups of collab characters and old original characters, like Sabretooth Meowscles, Britestar, or Ghost Ri-Durrr. Taking it a step further, the addition of kicks has also changed the aesthetic. Now, players can put a literal pair of Nike Air Jordans on the Xenomorph. They can make Ghost Face wear Crocs. These are all things that would’ve felt extremely out of place in 2017 but are commonplace now.

Fortnite’s release date was long ago, but the game doesn’t seem to be slowing down too much. It is fair to expect a much longer lifespan, which will also make the game even more unrecognizable. It’s possible that revisiting this in five years will render the current version of the game an unrecognizable relic, too.

Featured image via Epic Games