Epic Games Whacks SuperData Over Fortnite Reports, Which "Do Not Align With Reality"

Epic Games has taken issue with SuperData's reporting of Fortnite: Battle Royale's numbers. A company representative told GamesIndustry.biz that SuperData does not have Epic's revenue data -- which has never been shared publicly -- and that its reported numbers "do not align with reality."

"We are disappointed that SuperData has repeatedly published wildly inaccurate reports about Fortnite based on what we believe is questionable methodology."

SuperData has generally reported Fortnite as being on the decline in recent months, with the January report saying that the game's revenue numbers "continued their gradual decline and hit their lowest level since November 2017." A representative for Nielsen, which owns SuperData, was not immediately available for comment.

We've poked fun at SuperData's reporting in the past, like when the company omitted World of Warcraft from its top-earning MMOs of 2017. As someone who, a decade and a half ago, performed similar monthly market analysis for a major tabletop gaming industry magazine, I can also say that sometimes, when you don't have enough information, you do have to fudge numbers a little bit (or a lot).

That said, I'm quite certain that SuperData has much better access and procedures than I did. Just seeing the team of roughly 40 people on its "About" page shows that they have significantly more human resources at its disposal -- and some of them might have actually been educated for this sort of work, unlike some doofus who was just good at math and liked spreadsheets.

Of course, this could also be just Epic issuing doing a little damage control so as to counter SuperData's negative reports -- whether they're accurate or not. As I used to say when someone told me that the numbers we published were wrong, "OK, then tell us what they are and we'll correct them." Surprisingly, I didn't get any takers.