Game of the Year 2025 predictions: The front-runners and challengers to come
Steal A Brainrot, Roblox’s bleak meme thievery simulator, is breaking records left and right — including outside its original platform. The game is now also the largest fan-made experience in Fortnite since Epic Games released its Unreal Editor for Fortnite (UEFN) in 2023. For a brief period of time, there were more Fortnite fans hoarding and pilfering obscure Italian memes than there were people playing the battle royale mode that’s made Fortnite the most popular game in the world across all platforms. So far, on Fortnite, Steal A Brainrot has amassed a high of 542,082 peak concurrent players in merely weeks. To put that into perspective, one of the biggest releases of the year is Hollow Knight: Silksong, which hit a peak of 587,150 concurrents on Steam.
For those of you out of the loop, Steal A Brainrot is a Roblox game where users can collect creatures based on internet memes, like Ballerina Cappuccina and Bobrito Bandito. If that sounds like gibberish to you, your screen time is either enviable or you’re probably not Gen Alpha. The gameplay, if you could call it that, involves collecting pseudo Pokémon and installing them in your base. The longer you have them, the more value the Brainrot accrues. The kicker is that anyone can steal your NFTs, a reality that’s led to a bevy of viral videos involving crying children. You could also take Brainrots from the conveyor belt that generates them randomly, but are you really having fun if you’re not ruining someone’s day? Much to think about.
In any case, this experience has become a runaway hit for Roblox. Arguably, Steal A Brainrot is one of the largest video games available today. To wit, it recently made headlines for reaching an incredible 23 million concurrent players at one time. For contrast, Counter-Strike 2 on Steam reached a 30-day high of 1.5 million concurrents. Really, you could put together the top ten peak concurrents for Steam’s top ten video games at this moment, and you’d still only get a fraction of the players that Steal A Brainrot is getting on a busy day.
Now Fortnite’s getting in on the action as well. Though its version of Steal A Brainrot isn’t made by the same people from Roblox, the rights were licensed by the company that owns it. Meaning, this is no mere Fortnite fan rip-off; it’s legit. FeRinS, one of the main people behind the Fortnite version, is only 25 years old. Epic Games pays creators based on map engagement, a metric that takes into consideration aspects like active playtime, the number of new players, and whether players are spending actual money inside of Fortnite. Last year, the company paid out $352 million to creators in its ecosystem, and many participants are making bank on the platform, with the most successful creators on the platform making millions every month. It’s lucrative enough that entire studios have formed around making maps on Fortnite, so all of that money isn’t necessarily going to plucky upstarts. Given that Steal A Brainrot is reaching highs well beyond what Fortnite Creative maps achieved in 2024, you can make some reasonable assumptions about how much Steal A Brainrot is making even if the creators have to give a percentage of that money back to the IP holders. That’s especially true when you consider that the game offers a wide range of microtransactions, some of which make it easier to steal or retain Brainrots.
It’s been enough of a smash hit that even Epic Games’ CEO is boasting about Steal A Brainrot’s reach. Tim Sweeney’s latest posts on X are re-shares of posts that say things like, “If a Creative map can hit #2 CCU, it shows UEFN maps can actually stand up against [battle royale]. This could be the first step toward Creative leading Fortnite’s future.”
If Fortnite’s future lies in the hands of fans repeating whatever is already working elsewhere, well, history has a way of repeating itself now, doesn’t it? But while Epic Games benefits from Steal A Brainrot’s explosive success, users aren’t so sure that this state of events portends great things about Fortnite’s direction. One of the most upvoted threads within the last month on Fortnite’s subreddit is a critique of Steal A Brainrot and Epic Games.
“They are promoting AI slop, copy and paste creative maps more than their own BR season,” the post, which highlights that Fortnite’s own numbers have been faltering of late, reads. Modes like the phone-friendly Blitz Royale have been a boon for Fortnite, but aside from Darth Vader AI repeating slurs, it’s been a while since the game has been at the center of the cultural zeitgeist in a positive way. With baffling offerings like the upcoming “Delulu mode,” the impression of some fans is that Epic Games is throwing things at the wall hoping that something will stick.
That same thread is also indicative of why Steal A Brainrot will likely only continue growing on Fortnite, however. A wild number of replies are from people saying that they’re playing Fortnite specifically for Steal A Brainrot, and that kids who can’t hang in the competitive shooting modes are flocking to the more casual experience as well.
“They don’t enjoy BR or any competitive game modes because the matchmaking pits them against unbelievably good players,” one reply reads.
Meanwhile, the most recent update for Fortnite has increased storm damage, meaning that the basic experience will become even more difficult for passersby. As Roblox continues to accrue negative headlines about predators, it’s possible that Fortnite might experience an influx of users fleeing the platform at the urging of concerned parents.
“This is going to prove to be extremely unhealthy for the game in general,” the original post argued. “This game has become a corporate shell of what it once was.”
