Fortnite fans paying massive markup for rare retail discs

That $59.88 price is looking downright quaint these days. (credit: Imgur)

Fortnite owes much of its massively scaled success to the fact that anyone can download and play the game's battle royale mode for free. But that free-to-play popularity fact hasn't stopped people from paying heavily inflated prices of up to $450 for disc-based retail copies of the game.

Gearbox Software published a limited number of physical disc copies of Fortnite for PS4 and Xbox One (and the PC in Europe) alongside the game's paid Early Access release last July. That $60 release—which was focused on the player-vs-environment "Save the World" mode—came was well before the game started getting outsized attention for the launch of its free-to-play battle royale mode in late September.

The retail discs, which have been out of stock at major retailers for months now, are quickly becoming sought-after collector's items for rabid Fortnite fans. A quick search of recently completed eBay listings shows retail console copies of Fortnite (including new, used, and sealed copies) selling for an average of about $130 (and a median of $110) over the past two weeks. Used copies from Amazon's third-party sellers are currently going for a minimum of $175 for a bare disc without the case.

Read 3 remaining paragraphs | Comments