1. It was F2P so too many kids.

2. I still suck at build mode.

3. The astetics were weird but I got used to it and it makes spotting enemies easier when everyone's a cartoon.

4. I got over Kratos and Xenomorphs dancing. It's funny now.

You telling me people don't hate fortnite now?

Because it was the new thing the kids were doing. Go back 10 years and you'd fine people shitting on Minecraft for similar reasons. Couple that with the fact that Fortnite effectively cartoonified PUBG and became bigger than it and you have a perfect storm. Similar to Counter Strike players who hate on Valorant for being cartoony. I present to you this now legendary copypasta that summarizes things:

valarante child game.... look to cartoon grapfix to make kid player happy like children show.. valarante cartoon world with rainbow unlike counter strike chad with dark corridorr and raelistic gun.. valarante like playhouse. valarant playor run from csgo fear of dark world and realism

I'm sure different communities have different reasons for hating Fortnite. I think the primary reason in the communities I run in is that Fortnite used to be a completely different game that was perpetually in development. Then, PUBG popularized the battle royale formula, and Epic sorta just copied that into Fortnite and gave it away for free to essentially steal the audience that PUBG had built.

I don't really play multiplayer games, so I didn't have a dog in the fight. I can understand the hate though. It must be hard to watch the game you love start to bleed players because a massive corporation copies their product, gives it away for free, and makes it up on the back-end by letting players pay to look like popular characters they have emotional attachments to.

I guess the reason it stopped is because it's just hard to sustain hatred for a product for long.

For me, a lot of it came down to the fact that Epic Games more or less dropped Unreal Tournament 4 to focus on what appeared to be a low effort adaptation of PUBG slapped over another game, and in doing so basically ripped the heart out of deathmatch arena shooters, and all we got out of it was a game that didn’t excel at any specific thing beyond appeal to children.

At this point I’m still sour about UT, but Fortnite has gotten enough updating to its technology and graphics that I’m less angry about it pretty much becoming Unreal Engine’s flagship game and more angry about what it represents. The game has always been fine.

Stuff that's popular with any demographic - but especially mid teens and younger - gets hated on disproportionately when adults that are disinterested see it 'invading' their spaces.

At least that's my take.

It was probably the extreme surge in popularity. Sustaining hate for something so innocuous is difficult long-term, so people lost interest. My son and I started in season 2, and he still plays with his friends. It's a phenomenal social game.

That's my guess anyway.

I played Fortnite when it was a tower defense coop game. It was okay, nothing special. Then PUBG came out and it gained some popularity. Fortnite quickly copied this and went free to play. In a short amount of time, a game I kind of liked became overrun by children that were screaming into the microphone the entire game.

That was when I stopped paying attention to Fortnite at all. AFAIK, the hate never stopped.

The mic spam

For me personally:

a) I really dislike Multiplayer/PvP only games especially in the BR genre and those loosely in that area. Halo Infinite kinda sits in this for me. Feels like they didn't put as much effort into the single player campaign as much as they did the Multiplayer side. And I've LOVED the Halo series up to this point including 4 and 5.
b) There is of course the whole children aspect. And it's not just singling out Fortnite. I've been into other games in the past that I've had to give up because of a sudden influx of kids. I used to play RecRoom a lot as an example. But it seemed when they started adding 'pancake' support and added a mobile app, it just went downhill FAST. I haven't bothered to go back.
c) It does seem like they are trying way too hard these days to keep it relevant. Every time I turn around I see some new game mode or environment, the latest meme included somehow, some of the more obnoxious content creators shilling for them, etc..

That said, this is all my own personal view on it. Doesn't bother me if others play it or what they think about it. The game just simply isn't for me.

For me/my group, originally Fortnite was a group PvE game with a legitimate storyline etc. The BR element got tacked on, got crazy popular, and along with loot boxes became the focus of the game to the detriment of the original product.

I think it was a combination of it being new at the time and there being a lot of kids playing it. Older teens/young adults often tend to not want to play with young kids. I remember everyone used to complain about, and make fun of kids (aka twelvies) playing COD. I seem to also remember people making fun of Minecraft because it was for kids. As for why it stopped, I think it just got old. The hivemind moved on to hating something else. People grew up a bit, the 12 year olds are now 17? (bloody hell time flies).