Fortnite

Battle Royale launched free on September 26, 2017 and hit 1 million players in 24 hours, 10 million in two weeks. Epic has run a weekly-patch, chapter-and-season live service ever since, staging the largest concurrent-player events in the industry. The cadence came at a documented human cost (2019 crunch reporting: 70-100 hour weeks), and Epic's deliberate 2020 App Store rule-breaking cost iOS players years of updates. Nine years in, Fortnite remains the dominant live-service platform.

• Weekly patches for years plus near-instant hotfixes — the overpowered Infinity Blade was removed in 3 days with an admission Epic 'messed up' — though the cadence was powered by reported 70-100-hour crunch weeks (Polygon, 2019).
• Server infrastructure that survives 14.3M concurrent live-event players and season launches; Chapter 7 seasons each closing with live events, a record no peer matches.
• Epic deliberately broke App Store payment rules in August 2020, triggering Fortnite's removal and costing iOS players years of updates — a self-inflicted support gap for millions of mobile players, attributable to Epic alone.
• Nine years of chapters, seasons, crossovers, live events, and modes (Lego Fortnite, Fortnite Festival, Fortnite OG) — Fortnite remains the benchmark other live services are measured against.