Fortnite is this video game phenomenon where you can dress up as Lady Gaga, do survival missions, attend an Eminem or Aya Nakamura concert, exchange and publish between users, but also create an entire universe. Can do what we call “maps”! I summarize too much Immediately…. If you want to communicate with 10/30 year olds, you have the basics down! And to give you an order of magnitude, in January 2024, Fornite’s counters showed 247 million active accounts worldwide!
On the border between video game, social network and metaverse: Fortnite is a kind of all-in-one online leisure activity. Disney just invested $1.5 billion to develop a virtual amusement park!
Logically, this online game has quickly become an investment destination for brands and commercial partnerships. But now Fortnite is also becoming a humanitarian player!
In 2022, the American company that developed it, Epic Games, donated all profits made by the game over two weeks to contribute to humanitarian aid in Ukraine. That’s $144 million! Of course, Fortnite is a free game, but it makes money, and a lot of it, thanks to the purchases that users make to personalize their “game experience” with outfits, dances, characters!
If the entire video game industry mobilized to send millions to Ukraine since the start of the war and the invasion of the country by Russian troops two years ago, there was still no system for online fundraising on Fortnite that directly mobilized players. . When on the Twitch platform for example: e-viewers can press “donate” when they follow a charitable program.
Starting today on Fornite, users will be able to walk around a “map” that represents Maidan Square, the square of Ukrainian independence, and donate funds to UNITED24, a platform created by President Zelensky. The funds raised will allow the construction of a clinic in the Mykolive region, 369,750 euros are needed.
It’s a bit like on YouTube: creators are paid by the number of views, on Fortnite they are paid by the number of people who visit their “map”! Except that the creator is the United 24 Fund that makes the money! For example you can leave your game avatar on the square all night to raise donations!
So obviously Fornite is also, and above all, a shooting game, making it a place of humanitarian mobilization is paradoxical! But on this map, we will be forbidden to shoot or destroy anything!
