Drop in. Nearly a hundred other players have done the same. They could be anywhere, but a few are right up in your face. They fall first, and you scavenge the battleground. In the distance, you hear gunfire. You fight, hide, and scavenge some more. The world shrinks, forcing the dispersed and elite players ever closer together. Will you be the last one standing?
It sounds like a fun little gameplay loop. And for a while there, it was. Whether your introduction to the battle royale genre wasPlayerUnknown’s BattlegroundsorMinecraftHunger Games, it’s an arena we’ve all found ourselves in one way or another. But that was years ago. Too far away to remain trendy, too close for the nostalgia wave. The battle royale genre seems to be on its last legs - but there’s one holdout.
In 2025, if you’re playing a battle royale game, it’s almost certainlyFortnite.
A recent study byNewzoohad some interesting discoveries about what games people are choosing each day. According to them, shooters and battle royales take up 40% of playtime, across all the nations they looked at. And 2021, those 40 points were split almost evenly between the two, with battle royales taking 19% of everyone’s total playtime. Years later, that 19 has fallen to a 12.
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That’s certainly a hefty chunk of players gone, but Newzoo found something even more interesting when you break things down to specific battle royale games. In 2021, Fortnite took home 43% of hours played in battle royales. That same number in 2024 was a whopping 77%.
As the genre has dropped off, players seem to be making one of two choices: either switch to a new kind of game entirely, or pick up Fortnite.
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The Newzoo study looked at more than just shooty shooty gun games, of course. Shooters are obviously a titan of the modern gaming scene, but that’s not to say they are without challengers.
Something a bit slower-paced - role-playing games - have been on the rise (thanks,IGN). The Newzoo study claims that RPGs are up from their 9% playtime slot, all the way to 13%. And in that genre, things are much less centralized in one game or another.
There’s a sort of ‘big five’ here: Baldur’s Gate 3, Diablo IV, Hogwarts Legacy, Honkai: Star Rail, and Starfield all hold varying grips on the top spot, but together they only account for 18% of all RPG playtime.
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Role-playing games are doing really well, but at the moment, nobody’s been crowned king of the genre. Not in the same way that Fortnite’s conquered battle royales. Baldur’s Gate has proved it’s got staying power, butsomething tells methat Starfield’s not quite in that league.
In all likelyhood, if something were to take that crown, that game may still be waiting for it’s launch day. Fortnite certainly wasn’t the original battle royale, but that didn’t stop its rise.
So if you’re a fan of role-playing games, there very well might be something special on the distant horizon. Studios and publishers alike will pour over data like this to get ideas for their next big project, and if RPGs are built on fertile ground, you can bet they’ll start tilling.
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