As we recently wrote, the video game industry is having one of its worst years to date. But that downturn apparently hasn’t affected JOGO, the Fortnite development studio unveiled in May 2024 by founding content creators Typical Gamer and Mustard Plays, plus Unreal Editor for Fortnite developer Mark Price.
Over the last few months, JOGO has reportedly made nearly $7 million from its custom Fortnite maps, and just hired a $2 million payroll of experienced game devs to keep pushing out more content.
Typical Gamer (who has 15.3 million subscribers and brings 60 million views a month on YouTube) and Mustard Plays (890,000 subscribers, ~2 million monthly views) had been “covertly” working on JOGO for about a year when they announced it. The company was born out of their mutual passion for Fortnite–and, for Typical Gamer, that passion started with him uploading his Ws to YouTube years ago.
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He eventually upgraded from playing Fortnite to making maps for it, and by the time JOGO launched, he was one of Fortnite‘s highest-earning custom map creators.
It’s clear his individual success is translating into group success for JOGO. Per Digiday, the studio’s newest map launched Oct. 19 and has already generated “thousands of dollars in revenue.” It also hit peak playership of nearly 23,000 people. For context, at press time, there are around 1.9 million people around the world actively playing Fortnite on Steam, and there are around 60,000 people playing Apex Legends, one of Fortnite‘s biggest battle royale competitors.
So JOGO’s map alone was able to net a third of Apex‘s active player count. Pretty impressive.
Mustard Plays told Digiday JOGO has “been profitable from day one,” and now the studio’s multimillion-dollar earnings are being funneled back into development. Since May, it’s pulled a Netflix and hired veteran video game devs who worked on major titles–people like Jay Beard, who produced PlayStation games including The Mark of Kri and Twisted Metal III. It now has a team of 24 people, plus a network of freelancers.
With next steps in mind, the studio is eyeing the growing number of custom map partnerships Fortnite and Roblox are sealing with brands.
“We want to build places where players come, and then the advertisers can come and advertise in those spaces, and we are talking with different brands about integrating into our experiences where it makes sense,” Mustard Plays said. “Obviously, we don’t want to compromise the player’s experience–but still make it something that is attractive to advertisers.”
JOGO also previously said it wants to look into making maps for Roblox (which, speaking of big revenue numbers, has paid out a massive amount of money to creators of custom content) and Grand Theft Auto.
Whatever it decides to do, JOGO is clearly finding its playerbase. If it can further monetize its maps with advertiser partnerships, it could turn into a prime example of how creators can grow their gaming passion into sustainable businesses that contribute to–or even dominate–the industry they love.
