YouTube’s Annual Rewind Video featured a lot of Fortnite among this year’s biggest video trends and viral moments.
Vloggers, memers, celebrities, and viral personalities were all gathered into a video montage to celebrate the 2018 success of YouTube’s community. And popular battle royale game Fortnite was very prominent.
Fortnite was developed and introduced by Epic Games in 2017. Since then, its player base has grown rapidly. Epic’s creative take on the genre has attracted millions of players to the free-to-play game.
In a June blog post, Epic Games announced that Fortnite has grown to 125 million players.
According to Youtube, 100 streamers joined together in a single Fortnite game that generated more than 42 million live views. The huge popularity of Fortnite was dominant on the platform, with thousands of streamers taking part.
The video started with Will Smith announcing the Rewind promotion and saying that if he could control Rewind, he’d want Fortnite and Marques Brownlee in it. The video then showed the classic Fortnite bus with popular content creators jumping out while Fortnite streamer Tyler “Ninja” Blevins served as the bus’ driver.
The video also featured Fortnite dances while comments solicited from fans were flashed on the screen.
These dances were recently dragged into controversy when rappers and musicians alike began sueing developer Epic Games for violating copyright. The famed dance steps, also known as emotes, are sold and in-game under different names. Players buy dances through Fortnite’s digital currency called V-bucks.
YouTube fans were disappointed with how some of this year’s huge moments were skipped over by the video’s producers. The absence of Felix “PewDiePie” Kjellberg, who has more subscriptions than any other YouTube channel, was also questioned.
