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A new study by a UK retailer has found that Fortnite players complained the most about dying in-game in comparison to Call of Duty or Battlefield players. Released in 2017, the free-to-play battle royale has over 350 million registered players and remains as popular as ever thanks to large seasonal updates and special events.
Epic Games’ popular battle royale was originally released as a pay-to-play PvE game titled Fortnite: Save the World. Noting the incredible success of PUBG at the time, the battle royale component of Fortnite was quickly developed and released a mere two months later. The title has since gone on to become one of the most popular games of all time, with a study conducted in 2020 revealing that Fortnite’s playtime is longer than humanity’s existence.
A study conducted by a UK electronics retailer Ebuyer (via Games Press) revealed that Fortnite players took to social media to complain the most about dying in-game. The study was conducted over the span of a year using AI to monitor social media posts that used keywords such as “dying” or “game over” on sites like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Ebuyer concluded that Fortnite took the top spot with 173,793 posts on social media, with Grand Theft Auto 5 coming second at 40,701 posts. In third place with 12,686 posts was Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, followed by 11,242 posts for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare. Black Ops Cold War earned sixth place, sitting at 11,106 posts, while Battlefield V appeared in ninth place, with only 3,485 mentions.
It should be noted the research did not take into account Fortnite’s large active player base and the free-to-play nature of the title, making the game much more accessible in comparison to others in the study. The game is incredibly popular, with over 12.3 million concurrent Fortnite players participating in Travis Scott’s in-game concert. Thus, in a study that was determined only by the total amount of social media mentions, it was unlikely that single-player games in contention such as The Last of Us Part II or Super Mario Maker 2 would have topped the list due to their significantly smaller active player count.
Ebuyer’s study has definitely yielded some interesting results, despite its limited scope. It would be intriguing to see a more in-depth study that could also take into consideration player count and single-player titles where repeated deaths are a core part of the gameplay, such as Dark Souls or Hades. Although the study has concluded, players will no doubt have more to post about on social media in the coming days with Fortnite’s Operation: Sky Fire event releasing September 12.
Fortnite is available on all platforms.
