When Epic Games revealed its new battle royale mode for Fortnite last week, the developer made no secrets about what it was inspired by.
Anyone who has played or seen Fortnite’s mode can notice the similarities between it and PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds. In both games, players parachute into an area and try to find loot before fighting close to 100 other players to see who is the last man standing, all while the playing area gets smaller due to hazards closing in.
It’s probably not a coincidence that the Fortnite mode was released in the midst of the huge success of PUBG, and the developers at Bluehole, Inc. have taken notice.
A press release issued by Bluehole this morning makes it very clear that the developers are not happy with Fortnite’s new mode and how similar it is to 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,” said Chang Han Kim, vice president and executive producer for Bluehole, Inc. “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.”
In both the announcement trailer for Fortnite: Battle Royale and the blog post that announced the game mode, PUBG was directly mentioned by Epic Games.
“We have also noticed that Epic Games references PUBG in the promotion of Fortnite to their community and in communications with the press,” Kim said. “This was never discussed with us and we don’t feel that it’s right.”
In perhaps the most eye-opening part of the release, however, Kim seemed to have stoked the flame a bit further, insinuating that this is just the beginning of Bluehole’s qualm with Epic Games.
“The PUBG community has and continues to provide evidence of the many similarities as we contemplate further action,” Kim said.
There’s no doubting the similarities between the two titles, but the question moving forward will be if they are too similar and what, if any, legal action could be taken by Bluehole.
