Fortnite co-creator says the game's $26 billion+ success is "humbling" - especially since people "said we were crazy" at the start

Fortnite co-creator says the game's multi-billion dollar success story, is a "staggering," "humbling" achievement - not least since critics "said we were crazy" at the start of the battle royale project.

In an interview with 12DOVE recently at the Sands: International Film Festival in St Andrews, Scotland, former Epic Games CCO Donald Mustard said that his time with the game is "such a humbling experience the more I reflect on it - and even the whole time, it was an amazingly humbling experience to see that something that I've been able to work on with, not just with a bunch of people, a lot of the core team who made Fortnite were people I had been working with for years even decades."

"We have something we collectively built together and in our heads thought ‘what if we did that thing, wouldn’t it be cool’. and to see that resonate and resonate and resonate with hundreds of millions of people is staggering. And then to be able to experiment in the way that we did."

Mustard speaks very positively about his team, but Fortnite's success speaks for itself. Fortnite is understood to have made more than $20 billion in revenue since its launch in 2017, with the vast, vast majority of that coming from its battle royale. In spite of all that success, however, the game's creator admits that "at the time [...] we were just making stuff up. Even the way that we structured the pacing of a battle royale match in our world, it was largely designs to give you most of your time where you were handing out with your friends and not engaging in combat."

"The fact that it kind of worked on the scale it did is astounding and wonderful. I will cherish it forever. I have had so many unique experiences with my own family and my own friends, my own kids, playing Fortnite but then being able to talk with so many people  that have been able to be entertained by it. It’ll be a cherished thing for the rest of my life. And I can't believe I got to experience it."

Fortnite never got Metroid series hero Samus, because Nintendo would only let her into the battle royale if she was a Switch-exclusive character.