Fortnite was stuck in development hell, with such development beginning as early as 2011 when it was first announced at the Spike Video Game Awards. The earliest idea for Fortnite was a horror-style third-person shooter similar to Gears of War, another series developed by Epic Games and later sold off to Microsoft.

Fortnite was originally made using Unreal Engine 3, but later shifted to its successor Unreal Engine 4 due to new high-tech functions that its preceding engine lacked. Because of this, the game was almost a PC-exclusive game and was set for a 2013 release, as Epic Games did not want to wait months for a game to get approved by console manufacturers, such as Nintendo and Sony, although they later acknowledged that a console release could not be ruled out. As Epic shifted to Unreal Engine 4 however, they immediately ran into development problems, which resulted in them hiring MMORPG developers to help finish the game.