Where singer-songwriter Aloe Blacc needed just a single dollar in his 2010 soul-blues song, Fornite players need a whole lot more — 84 to be exact, according to a new survey conducted by LendEDU, a student and personal loan marketplace that polled 1,000 Fortnite players about their in-game spending habits.
The survey revealed that 68.8 percent of Fortnite players have shelled out cold, hard cash to make in-game purchases, spending an average of $84.67.
To put that into perspective, that’s enough coinage to buy the standard edition of Fornite twice over, with enough dough left to pick up a pack of 10 chicken nuggets from McDonald’s — because what better way to replenish your body after screaming at your opponents than with deep-fried bits of meat dunked in an array of condiments, the Rick and Morty-promoted Szechuan most especially?
Of the Fortnite players who spent money for cosmetic items, emotes, and/or dance moves, 36.78 percent were making in-game purchases for the very first time. Additionally, just over a quarter of the surveyed Fortnite players, 25.3 percent, pay for Twitch in some capacity.
The most popular items players emptied their wallets for? New characters and outfits, which account for 58.9 percent of what Fornite fans were willing to dole out the Jacksons for. Gliders came in second place, making up 18.06 percent of players’ purchases, followed by harvesting tools at 13.52 percent, and emotes and dance moves at 9.52 percent. Guess the internet’s obsession with Fortnite dances hasn’t perfectly translated to fans’ spending habits, huh?
What’s perhaps the most shocking takeaway from the survey is that nearly one-fifth, a reported 20 percent, of the Fortnite players who were surveyed didn’t know they were purchasing items that wouldn’t give them an advantage during gameplay. The majority of players, 80 percent, however, were fully aware that their purchases were only cosmetic but had no issue exchanging money to look prettier or just a little more like Keanu Reeves in John Wick.
These results aren’t exactly pretty — they certainly don’t prove Fortnite players to be penny-pinchers — but they aren’t surprising considering how wide-reaching, emphatic, and impassioned the community of the popular co-op sandbox survival game (and more notably its battle royale mode) is.
In the study, Fortnite fan Whitney Meers justified her in-game spending habits as such: “I would continue to spend if there’s something I really love, like a particularly funny emote or cool skin. It’s the same amount as a cup of coffee and I get one of those a day, but the pleasure from a fun emote or piece of gear can potentially last as long as I keep playing Fortnite.”
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If Epic Games putting $100,000,000 up for grabs in Fortnite’s tournament prize pools for the current esports season wasn’t enough to convince you that people are completely taken by the title, let the fact that your everyday Joe, Jill, and Jeff have spent as much on the game as most people spend on roughly three months’ worth of car insurance change your mind.
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