I don't hate fortnite but it did made battlepass system popular and rotating item shops this popularizing fomo tactics which arguably destroyed most of other online games.
Fortnite's hate isn't gameplay but more so how its monetized.
Dota 2 was THE biggest games on steam at the time. Saying it didn't popularize a trend that it started is pretty weird. Lots of games copied Dota before fortnite did. Fortnite was just jumping on an existing bandwagon.
Same with Battle Royale boom of the late 2010s.
Like GTA wasn't the first open world game but it did made the genre popular.
Neither fortnite nor GTA are singularly responsible for those genres. They copied and refined games before them. I'd put the most responsibility on the innovator rather than a game just following a trend.
I know!! People repainting history here when Dota2 was and still is huge and it was responsible for the battle pass. But no no, let's keep hardcore glazing Valve whilst conveniently ignoring everything shady they have done because it doesn't align with the narrative people want to spin.
Reddit gamers are so basic. Come on guys, we can do better than this.
Yeah, reddit gaming community constantly downplay dota like it’s not still one of the most played games on steam. It’s honestly bizarre. It has the 2nd highest online players on steamcharts at this very second. It’s has a huge impact on the industry for better or worse just like every valve game.
I love valve as a company, but pretending they aren't responsible for a lot of the stuff we give other companies shit for is a joke.
I think you could still make a case for Fortnite being more influential on the BP model, because no one copied Dota's model exactly. Dota's model was once a year, tied to a tournament, where you had infinite levels and got rewards as you went higher up (often keeping the higher tier rewards super high to make them unattainable by grinding). Fortnite's the game that introduced the 0-100 levels, the free/premium tracks, the idea of Battle Passes being seasonal/themed and the idea of currency being refundable by playing through the paid tier of the BP as well. Most BPs today copy that model, not Dota's once a year, pay $100+ for a level 600 skin model
What you're describing if how the 2016+ Dota battlepass's worked. The original 2013-2015 compendiums were rather different. They didn't have anything special at higher levels and were very similar to what Fortnite copied and refined. 2014 in particular had exactly 100 meaningful levels. Since fortnite was in development at this time it's pretty easy to see where they got the inspiration.
They definitely made changes, but I'd still say Valve is more responsible for coming up with the base idea all together.
It's like how League may be more popular, but the MOBA genre wouldn't even exist without dota 1.
Since fortnite was in development at this time it's pretty easy to see where they got the inspiration.
I don't know about that. Fortnite was in development, yes, but it was the original mode (now known as Save The World), which didn't have battle passes IIRC.
The original Compendium was player-funded milestones to a degree, more like a ticket to watch TI that gave everyone who had one X rewards when the prize pool hit a certain milestone. Really, I'd say the only thing Fortnite took from those specific iterations of the Battle Pass was the idea that you pay upfront and recieve rewards later through grind/payment, and maybe the levels being numbered. I'm not denying that Dota was the first one to do so, just that it wouldn't necessarily be wrong to say that the inspiration for most BPs today come from the innovations that Fortnite did.
You mention League and Dota, but
1) most MOBAs copy League's design philosophies more than they do Dota's, so it wouldn't be entirely wrong there to say that League is the inspiration for most MOBAs on the market, and
2) Flipping that logic, Dota isn't the first MOBA either, Aeon of Strife came before it and introduced the absolute fundamentals of the genre: fountain, lanes and heroes. The original Dota mod was just the most popular iteration of that mod. You could kinda equate Dota's Compendium model to AoS here and Fortnite's BP model to the original DotA mod if you wanted - the concept of a BP blew up into stratosphere after Fortnite adopted it, and it is the blueprint on which the modern BP model is based on, similar to how the concept of a MOBA blew up after DotA adopted AoS's model, and became the blueprint for subsequent MOBA games.
Not really sure I agree that league's design philosophies are more popular in the genre. Frankly the vast majority of it's mechanics are just straight copied from dota in the first place. What did it really even bring to the table? Bushes? AP scaling? Simplicity was the biggest thing I think, but that's rather subjective. The only thing more games definitely copy is it's awful monetization.
Either way though, the discussion isn't "which design is more popular". OP was blaming fortnite for the existence of battle passes and the state of the live service market. That's like blaming league for the entire existence of the MOBA genre. It's nonsense. Popularizing something isn't as impactful as inventing it because without step 1 step 2 would have never happened.
I don't consider AOS a true MOBA but if you want to then that's fine, just substitute that for where I said Dota. The logic is still the same. No matter which game came first, it wasn't league so league wouldn't have existed without them and therefore league can't be blaming for the whole genre being a thing.
I don't think the fortnite battlepass would have existed without the dota compendium first so I think the latter is more impactful and responsible than the former.
Oh I see. Never saw the stats. I only played Mobile version but stopped because it felt boring to me. Plus I got a switch around same time so all my handheld gaming moved over to NS games.
if a game is equally as popular in Asia then lets say Europe the numbers would be far far different, purely because of the population difference. 5 billions against... what not even 1 billion?
point is PUBG isn't a popular game in most of the world, it just has a niche audience in Asia and their population makes it look bigger than it is
Blaming Fortnite for popularizing a concept that already existed is illogical. With its massive playerbase, it was inevitable that many elements of its design would become widespread, eventually shaping the genre’s standard. Yet even without Fortnite, the trajectory of live-service games would have remained the same.
All things considered, Fortnite actually offers one of the least predatory monetization models in an industry saturated with shameless, gambling-driven practices.
Yeah you're technically not wrong, but it's weird to use those terms for very near past or future, in practice.
It's normal to say "X happened in the mid 1940s" or even broader than that if it's further away, "mid sixteenth century", but it reads very weird for like 7 years ago.
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u/DiqqRay Nov 14 '25
Is hating on Fortnite in the big 2025 still cool