Early Gameplay Footage of Fortnite Surfaces Online 14 Years Later

Some of the first gameplay footage of Fortnite has surfaced online from a behind-closed-doors event at Comic-Con in 2012.

The footage was recently posted to YouTube by Reddit user /u/kleuscher, who says that they found the footage on an old USB drive after saving it to it in 2012.

Kleuscher says that at the time, he got the footage from a Russian forum, and after uploading it to YouTube in 2012, he received a copyright strike from Epic Games.

You can watch the gameplay footage below, which, of course, is in poor quality, but nonetheless, it’s a great insight and throwback to what Fortnite originally was before it became a worldwide phenomenon.

The 5-minute presentation shows some of Fortnite Save the World’s original ideas, some of which would come to Fortnite Battle Royale years later. Gathering resources and building walls is one of the key insights that you’ll see, but it’s also cool to see the original designs and environments in Unreal Engine 5.

Fortnite Save the World originally released in 2027, described by Epic Games as a cross between Minecraft and Left 4 Dead. After the game’s initial launch, Epic Games had planned to release it as a free-to-play title, but instead changed its plans to focus on the Battle Royale version of the game.

Fortnite Save the World eventually went free-to-play in April 2026.

Fingers crossed, the footage being posted online will make others dig into their libraries and post even more footage of the game.

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