PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds / PUBG - Fortnite Battle Royale a PUBG Copy: News

This article contains information about the Bluehole and Epic Games dispute over Playerunknown's Battlegrounds and Fortnite, two Battle Royale games.

In this article we will talk about the issues between PUBG and Fortnite Battle Royale.

Fortnite Battle Royale a Copy of Playerunknown’s Battlegrounds?

A video game in the vein of Minecraft and Left 4 Dead recently showed up to the tune of seven million players. Fortnite is a third-person survival shooter on the PC. With its future release as a free-to-play video game and its recent appropriation of the Battle Royale genre, Fortnite developers Epic Games are in a heap of trouble. A few weeks ago, Bluehole released a press release regarding Fortnite. Bluehole, the company behind Battlegrounds, expressed concern last September 22 that Fortnite is “replicating the experience for which ‘PUBG’ is known.” (Source)

Some game companies like Polygon have called out the irony of this statement. After all, PUBG was based off a Battle Royale mod (which he also made). Not only that, all of these video games come from the same source: the original Battle Royale film (and its novel). It seems ironic that Bluehole can state that. However, we can dare to understand why. And for that we’ll have to make some comparisons.

Take a look at these two maps, for example: (in slideshow)

Just from the maps alone, you can tell that they were copying each other. I don’t think we need to go further enough. Battlegrounds and Fortnite Battle Royale look incredibly alike. However, we won’t stop here. Battlegrounds and Fortnite Battle Royale both feature nearly the same gameplay: get dropped on an island and survive using the weapons you find there. Of course, there are some differences.

Gameplay Differences

PUBG is a pulse-pounding 100-player deathmatch available now on Steam Access. It is a grim, hyperrealistic shooter. In fact, this is an understatement: everything you do in Battlegrounds will either get you killled in the long run, or get you killed immediately. And not only that. Playerunknown’s Battlegrounds is simply much, much mroe detailed. The game details everything from environment to bullet drop. This is partly due to its previous incarnation as an Arma II mod. As such, PUBG’s controls, gameplay, user interface, and combat are incredibly dense and have lots of bulbs and dials.

Meanwhile, Fortnite Battle Royale is a strange combination of Survival Games like Minecraft and the squad-based shooter, Left 4 Dead. In contrast to Battlegrounds‘s…grounded aesthetic, Fortnite is simply too simplistic. You can easily play the game as a kind of optimized (but mediocre) Battlegrounds. In its Battle Royale incarnation, it shares the same beginning and premise, but how you get there is up to you. Fortnite has a crafting system, you see, which is its only gain contra Battlegrounds.

Other Issues

According to Business Insider again, PUBG uses the Unreal Engine–which was created by Epic Games. This is incredibly, incredibly awkward. After all, Bluehole pays Epic Games for their use of the Unreal Engine!

You can find the Fortnite steam page for community here. As of the moment Fortnite is not yet on steam. However, you can check their website out here.

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