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As we sit in the comfortable denial that lets us believe it’s games like Arc Raiders and Battlefield 6 that are the most popular out there, earning the most attention and the most play time from the most players, pesky reality maintains its own truth, in which truly gargantuan numbers of people are playing Roblox and Fortnite fan-games you’ve likely never heard of. Fish It!, a Roblox game, saw nearly 28 million players yesterday, with 1.4 million playing at the same time. At the same time, Fortnite‘s creator-made Steal the Brainrot, itself a version of a wildly popular Roblox game, saw a record 1.09 million concurrent players. And as of last week’s changes to Fortnite which allow creators to implement microtransactions, it also introduced both super-expensive items and gambling!
In a game called Steal a Brainrot, it’s perhaps hard to expect anything less. The original Roblox game—which you’ll note has a slightly different title than its Fortnite imitator—was based on the Italian brainrot meme that was big in 2025. In the game, players could either buy or steal weird-looking animals, which generated in-game money through ownership. At one point it saw a record-breaking 25 million concurrent users—more than half the number of players every game on Steam has ever seen at once. And it’s ghastly—ask anyone with a kid who played it and you’ll hear tales of their distraught misery after their most expensive Brainrots were stolen. This, of course, is by design.
The game manifested in Fortnite as Steal the Brainrot in July of last year and immediately became one of the most popular player-created games, doing a lot to raise awareness that Fortnite even offered such options for creators. But until this weekend, it could only offer a money-less simulacrum. Within 24 hours of a change to the game’s regulations allowing microtransactions in user-created games, as reported by IGN, Steal the Brainrot was charging 4,900 V-Bucks (around $35) for the “Lucky Rot” bundle, a lootbox option that only might contain a rare brainrot animal-thing.
Epic’s approach to Fortnite and the ways in which players are able to create their own game modes is very much modeled on the eye-watering popularity of Roblox. But until very recently, Epic wasn’t allowing its audience to monetize those creations, giving Roblox a hefty edge among those hoping to catch the incredibly brief flashes of lightning in a bottle. Last Friday, that changed, and in that recognizable Epic style, the option was launched with a far better cut of the profits for developers than is typically offered elsewhere. (The Epic Games Store takes 12 percent of a game’s sales, compared to Steam and others’ 30 percent.)
Known as “islands” on Fortnite, those player-created games have been given access to developer tools for adding microtransactions since November of last year, with the switch-on date set for January 9, 2026. Deliberately aimed at scooping Roblox, 100 percent of the value of V-Bucks spent in a given game will go directly to creators until January 31, 2027, dropping to a still solid 50 percent after that. (Confusingly, this isn’t representative of actual spend due to platform fees—the full breakdown is here, but it essentially works out to 74 percent of money spent for the first year, then 37 percent afterward, largely due to the 30 percent cut taken by console owners.)
Alongside Steal the Brainrot‘s new lootboxes is a straight-up gambling wheel. As Gaming Bible notes, many are calling this out as unambiguously being a slot machine. You spend 100 V-Bucks (roughly a dollar) and you get to spin the wheel, with prizes including in-game items or currency. And given STB is obviously primarily aimed at children, this is…it’s not great, is it?
Fortnite, a children's game, now features slot machines that cost real money to play. pic.twitter.com/Qa7DkEZ8CO
— Pirat_Nation 🔴 (@Pirat_Nation) January 12, 2026
It’s definitely reductive to describe Fortnite as a whole as “a children’s game” as some have been doing. While it certainly is popular with a younger demographic, it still has a sizeable adult audience too. But when it comes to stealing brainrots, let’s be real: it’s overwhelmingly pre-teens being encouraged to play the odds, shelling out cash for a spin of the wheel or a box that might have something of use in it.
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