Lost Fortnite Footage Surfaces 14 Years Later

A lost recording of a closed-door Fortnite presentation from 2012 has surfaced after 14 years, showing the game long before the battle royale mode existed.

Today, Fortnite is associated with battle royale, massive events, and guest characters, but in 2012 the Epic Games project was a cooperative game about gathering resources, building fortifications, and defending against nighttime monster attacks.

The recording was made behind closed doors at Comic-Con in 2012. The uploader states that at the time they found the footage on the VKontakte social network and uploaded it to YouTube, after which they received a warning from Epic Games and deleted the video. A copy survived on their hard drive. Recently, a Fortnite history archivist contacted the uploader and, using the Internet Archive, determined that the recording might still be in their possession.

The video shows the foundations of the future Save the World mode, including world exploration, base building, trap placement, and monster battles.