No one in their wildest of imagination could have predicted the meteoric rise to fame of a simple Battle Royale game, Playerunknown’s Battlegrounds or as the denizens of this bleak survival game affectionately call it PUBG. Well, recently PUBG crossed the milestone of having more than 1.5 million concurrent players on steam. Now, let me put that number in context to those of you who may not be entirely familiar with the way steam statistics work, a player base of 1.5 million surpasses the peak concurrent players of DoTA 2 and CS:GO put together in their prime. Obviously such astronomical success means that clones of the game will be popping up left, right and centre. From the shady indie devs to huge AAA studios, everyone wants a slice of the Survival Battle Royale pie.
AAA studios wanting to cash in on the latest fad amongst gamers is nothing new, however, there is one game that has been grabbing a lot of attention, not just from the players, but also from the developers at Bluehole, and that is Epic Games’ new free-to-play Battle Royale title, Fortnite. The game focuses on loot and base building. The reason this title has stirred up so much of a hubbub is because Bluehole, the studio behind PUBG are considering legal action against it for possible IP infringement. Now, Epic Games are the people behind the Unreal Engine 4, the engine on which PUBG is built, and a lot of the elements were sourced from Epic Games by Bluehole. One look at Epic Games’ new title and you can immediately start spotting similarities between the two games. While Fortnite does feature some unique elements like a dynamic day and night cycle and a nifty building mechanic, the core elements of the game are eerily similar to the most popular game on steam as of now. However, the main reason seems to be that PUBG was also used to promote Fortnite Battleroyale in their dev videos and trailer. Hopefully it gets resolved soon and we get two great games to enjoy!
