Around 2017-2018, there used to be a huge circlejerk online about how Fortnite was the dumbest thing ever, to the point where “Fortnite bad, Minecraft good” was part of the infamous Keanu Chungus 100 meme. Why did it get so much hate, and why did it stop?
What I find really interesting is after the hate train ended it never had a resurgence in popularity like Minecraft did.
That might be because Fortnite had managed to become weirdly messy and bloated by the time that could happen, and was already somewhat degenerate/impure at launch. And unlike Minecraft, all the messy variation/complexity was right there on the surface, not part of a deep modding scene.
When I opened Minecraft, it didn’t make any effort to sell me a Borderlands skin.
That’s because neither actually got hit with a dip in playerbase due to the hate. The players were all happy. It was outsiders yelling at people to stop enjoying themselves. Eventually they moved on and the players just continued having fun.
I think Minecraft had lots of nostalgia to benefit it. If your only history with fortnite was hating it, you aren’t going to play it just for fun. But with Minecraft people had nice memories from when they were younger