I remember a lot of effort went into making sounds feel right in the NFS games. Including mixing engine sounds recorded from different parts of the car to match the camera's position relative to the car. We even had an article about the process of recording those sounds:

http://www.speedhunters.com/2015/10/recording-the-sounds-of-...

Speaking to the sound engineers was one of those wonderful glimpses into a whole other field that I love about working in games.

I can verify that at least parts of this list is correct. I remember getting jump scares when hearing monsters behind me in Dead Space 2, F.E.A.R., and as I mentioned earlier Left 4 Dead 2.

One thing I will say is that settings screens usually do a poor job at showing whether they're using surround sound. Games often just query the system for audio setup and show little more than whether you've selected headphones or speakers.

edit: since I thought it strange that your experience was so different from mine and that Fortnite wouldn't support it, I googled it and found an article from 2019 about how Fortnite, originally built for 5.1 surround sinds sound, now supports 7.1. My guess is there's some configuration issue with your PC.