The brazen similarities between Fortnite‘s upcoming Battle Royale mode and the popular survival experience PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds are not lost on Battlegrounds developer Bluehole Studio, who is now considering legal action against Fortnite developer Epic Games.

PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds has taken the gaming community by storm over the past couple months, recently unseating the PC titan Dota 2 for highest recorded concurrent player count on Steam. Fortnite‘s recently announced Battle Royale mode is a fairly obvious attempt by Epic to cash in on the current popularity of the multiplayer survival genre, but Bluehole claims the similarities go too far- particularly considering Fortnite creative director Donald Mustard flat-out name drops PUBG in Battle Royale’s announcement trailer. In an official statement, Bluehole VP and executive producer Chang Han Kim expressed the studio’s concerns.

“We’ve had an ongoing relationship with Epic Games throughout PUBG‘s development as they are the creators of UE4, the engine we licensed for the game,” Kim stated. “After listening to the growing feedback from our community and reviewing the gameplay for ourselves, we are concerned that Fortnite may be replicating the experience for which PUBG is known.”

“We have also noticed that Epic Games references PUBG in the promotion of Fortnite to their community and in communications with the press. This was never discussed with us and we don’t feel that it’s right. The PUBG community has and continues to provide evidence of the many similarities as we contemplate further action.”

There is no word yet on what to expect from Bluehole’s “further action.”

So the first thing that I'd like to clarify is that this is not about the battle royale game mode itself. There were other BR gamemodes earlier this year that were released, like last man standing or GTA 5's battle royale game mode, and we never raised an issue, and I think it's great that there's more competition and everyone should be able to create their own battle royale game mode, and it's not about the idea itself, it's about Epic Games, and that wasn't really clear [in the press release].

There are a lot of different issues but everyone else that released a battle royale game mode made their own thing, but it was Epic Games that made this game that is similar to us that has similar elements, and that's the concern, that it was Epic Games.

We use Unreal Engine to develop PUBG, and we pay a large amount of royalties based on the size of our success to Epic Games, and Epic Games always promoted their licensing models [saying] "We want to support the success indie developers", and [Bluehole is] this indie developer that has been the most successful one using the Unreal Engine this year, and that's the problem that I see.

there's another issue. We're going to get some technical support [from Epic], and we're going to work with them to make sure Unreal Engine better supports battle royale gameplay which requires 100 people in one session, and now we're starting to have concerns that they're going to develop new features or improve something in the engine to support that battle royale gameplay, and then use it for their own game mode.

Unless it gets hit with a cease and desist, Fortnite fans can look forward to the game’s Battle Royale mode launching September 26th, coming free to all players as a stand-alone experience. Unlike Battlegrounds, Battle Royale will be available across all major platforms, as a new trailer recently announced.



Posted: Sep 23, 2017 4:20 pm
Last Updated: Sep 23, 2017 4:21 pm
Related Forum: PC Gaming Forum

Source: http://www.egmnow.com/articles/news/pubg-team-upset-about-fortnites-battle-royale-and-it-could-get-ugly/