Early Fortnite Gameplay Footage From 2012 Comic-Con Demo Surfaces Online

Some of the earliest known gameplay footage of Fortnite has resurfaced online, nearly 14 years after it was first shown behind closed doors at Comic-Con 2012. Reddit user u/kleuscher posted the clip to YouTube, saying they'd kept it saved on a USB drive since 2012, when they originally got the footage from a Russian forum. Apparently, uploading it back then earned them a copyright strike from Epic Games. The nearly five-minute clip is rough around the edges quality-wise, but it's a neat look at what Fortnite looked like before Battle Royale took over.

The footage shows early versions of Save the World, Epic's cooperative survival mode, with resource gathering and wall-building already present in some form. Save the World eventually launched alongside the rest of Fortnite in July 2017, years after this demo, and didn't go free-to-play until 2020. It's a nice little reminder of how different Fortnite's original pitch was, and how the game evolved. Epic once described Save the World as a mix of Minecraft and Left 4 Dead, long before Battle Royale reshaped the game into the phenomenon it is today. It'd be pretty cool if this pushed other people to dig up and share more lost footage like this. Read full story