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Source: Epic Games/Nick Chester / Epic Games/ Nick Chester

If you haven’t jumped on the Fortnite wave the real question right now might be what are you waiting for?  The game is all the rage and it is so popular in fact that Drake is a huge fan and has recently been the talk of the town thanks to a recent streaming session of a match featuring Drizzy and popular Fortnite player Ninja.

The blue haired gamer has the Toronto MC to thank because he is now pulling in $500K a month just off his views.

Remember when they said playing video games is a waste of time? Or just mere child’s play? Yeah, we don’t either.

Epic isn’t the only way reaping the benefits of the game’s success.Streamers are also getting in on the action, the Twitch streamer Tyler “Ninja” Blevins is one of the games most popular players and streamers.

Since his epic stream event featuring the originator of the “Hotline Bling” Drake, Kylie Jenner’s baby daddy Travis Scott and Pittsburgh Steeler wide receiver JuJu Smith Schuster his streaming revenue shot up. Since Drake shared the stream with his 36.9 million Twitter followers, Ninja gained 635,000 concurrent viewers smashing Twitch’s record easily and also boosting his subscriber count to over 180,000. His monthly earnings went from at least $350,000 per month to an astounding $500,000 a month.

Now, what is this phenomenon of a game?  Fortnite originally launched as a paid Early Access game in July 2017 as a strictly PvE (player vs environment) multiplayer experience.Gameplay consisted of players building forts or bases to keep out hordes of zombies. The game was well-received in its original form but it’s when they decided to add the free to play “battle royal” mode in September that game went to a new level.

In this new mode, 100 players are dropped on a map naked armed with just the clothes on their back and a pickaxe. You can then opt to go lone wolf style or you can enter the game as a team of four.  Once on the map, you search for weapons and other defensive items to help hunt down other players. What keeps the match flowing is the “Storm Eye” concept in which the game slowly constricts the map eventually forcing players to converge in one area of the map. The last person standing is declared the winner of the match.

Gamers quickly noticed that new mode resembled another record-breaking game called PlayerUnknown’s Battleground that is basically the same.The game also boasted an impressive 30 million players and took home “Best Multiplayer Game” at the 2017 Video Game Awards. PUBG CEO tried to call out Epic for what they feel is a blatant ripoff of their game but due to the PUBG uses Epic’s Unreal game engine complicates matters.

Since the Fortnite: Battle Royal update went live back in September, it has roughly the same amount of gamers as PUBG, the game added 10 million more players by January 15th, by January 9th Epic adds that 5 million more people picked up the game helping them surpass PUBG with 45 million players. A new update also helped boost the games current numbers as well.

The game is totally free to play and Epic makes most of its money off purchases of in-game items. I personally haven’t gotten on the Fortnite wave but if Drake approves of it I might as well give it a shot now.

Photo: Epic/Nick Chester