Fortnite is synonymous with Epic Games. It’s difficult not to name the publishing powerhouse when talking about one of the most successful projects in gaming history, taking a free-to-play third-person shooter to the cosmic heights, making Epic a household name.
This massive accomplishment has allowed the Fortnite IP to bring in so many high-calibre collaborations that we’ve become greedy, asking for bigger and better crossovers and, in turn, amassing billions of dollars to do as they will in the gaming industry.
Only two years after Fortnite’s release, Epic Games ventured into other family-friendly titles to bring them into their Epic Games Launcher and capitalize on their white-hot popularity, starting with the acquisition of Psyonix’s Rocket League in May of 2019.
In 12 months, publishers took Rocket League free-to-play exclusively in their Epic Games Launcher, taking the purchase option away from Steam since the summer of 2020. Then, in March 2021, another similar deal was reached, this time with Mediatonic, bringing the party platformer Fall Guys into the Epic Games family and going F2P in the same timespan. Official purchase amounts for both acquisitions remain undisclosed to this day.
Now, both titles live under the Epic Games banner, joining the free-to-play trend and putting more pressure on collaborations to bring in revenue from their respective in-game shops. Collaborations like WWE, SpongeBob SquarePants, and Halo have all hit Fortnite, Rocket League, and Fall Guys' shops simultaneously over the years to little success in the last two.
While Epic Games' estimated annual revenue for 2025 sits around the $6 billion mark, it’s no surprise that most of it comes from Fortnite and its 360 cosmetics; skins, pickaxes, emotes – this is flaw number one in the post-F2P era for the other titles. Assuming big brands are enough to drive purchases, a lesson learned by Fortnite devs and their recent care for quality over quantity, which hasn’t translated well for the rest.
Fall Guys' most attractive cosmetics are its costumes, with extras like nameplates and winning animations becoming less critical to players when deciding what to buy in the shop, even worse for Rocket League, where the esports scene has established a cleaner look for try-hard players, meaning less cosmetic consumption, no matter the car, decal, or goal explosion.
Given Epic’s private company status, we do not have exact concurrent player numbers on the platform. Still, we can guesstimate players’ sentiment by looking at public Steam records and unofficial player counts, our second-best possible source.
Per activeplayer.io, Rocket League had 14,917 concurrent players on average during the last month of this year, a 79.98% drop from the F2P launch and peak. It gets uglier for Fall Guys, with an average of 532 players in December 2025, a 97% decrease from the F2P release and the peak in 2022 – almost a 100% drop.
While all eyes are on Fortnite, other Epic titles don’t run on the same luck, getting what feel like leftovers of otherwise important IPs joining the Epic Universe. Fortnite updates always release with attention to detail, Fall Guys’ and Rocket League’s? Rushed, like their acquisitions and F2P launches. Epic Games is in a great place financially, while non-Fort players are in a dead zone. Each new season resets ranks, leading to mindless queues without players ever worrying about what's going on in the shop – a free-to-play publisher's worst nightmare.
The quickest fixes are to market Fall Guys with more events, paid streams, tournaments, and overall branding, which we know there’s plenty of budget for. And as far as Rocket League goes, it’s best to shut down your engines and wait for Rocket League 2; not much else to do there, really. #RocketLeagueIsDead
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