PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds is a bonafide megahit, but its explosive success also makes it susceptible to copycats. Earlier this week, developer Epic Games announced its new game, Fortnite: Battle Royale, will arrive free on PC and consoles. Similar to PUBG, the new Fortnite: Battle Royal is another sandbox survival game.
In fact, developer Bluehole uses Epic's Unreal Engine to create PUBG, which suggests Fortnite: Battle Royale will likely operate on the Unreal Engine as well. Despite the shared mechanics, Bluehole clarified the team was never on-board, or involved, with the development of the new Fortnite game even though the Battle Royale teaser mentions inspiration from PUBG:
“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,” Bluehole’s Chang Han Kim explained in a press release. “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,” Kim continues. “This was never discussed with us and we don’t feel that it’s right.”
Bluehole has not explicitly mentioned legal action, but Kim hopes to hear an explanation from Epic Games. In a Q&A with PC Gamer, Kim dived a little deeper regarding his concerns:
"We reached out to Epic Korea, and they have reached out to their headquarters based in the US, but we didn't get any response, and that might be because it's the weekend right now.
"So, we just want to emphasize this only a problem because Epic Games is the company that makes the engine we use and we pay a large amount of royalties to them. And we had this business relationship and we had trust that we would be getting continued support, and we were looking forward to working more closely with them to get technical support, maybe develop new features. But our name was used to officially promote their game without our knowledge. There was no discussion. It was just a bit surprising and disappointing to see our business partner using our name officially to promote the game mode that is pretty similar to us and there was misunderstanding in the community that we're officially involved in the project."
Stay tuned as we expect to learn more as PUBG VS. Fortnite: Battle Royale continues to unfold.
