the battle royale mode arrived in fortnite on september 2017.
when did the battle royale mode arrive in fortnite?
september 2017
epic games had released "fortnite", a cooperative survival game, into early access near the release of "battlegrounds". epic saw the potential to create their own battle royale mode, and by september 2017, released the free-to-play "fortnite battle royale" which combined some of the survival elements and mechanics from the main "fortnite" game with the battle royale gameplay concept. the game saw similar player counts as "battlegrounds", with twenty million unique players reported by epic games by november 2017. bluehole expressed concern at this move, less due to being a clone of "battlegrounds", but more so that they had been working with epic games for technical support of the unreal engine in "battlegrounds", and thus they were worried that "fortnite" may be able to include planned features to their battle royale mode before they could release those in "battlegrounds". "battleground" developer, pubg corporation, filed a lawsuit against epic in south korea in january 2018 claiming "fortnite battle royale" infringements on "battlegrounds" copyrights. market observers predicted that there would be little likelihood of bluehole winning the case, as it would be difficult to establish the originality of "pubg" in court due to the battle royale game genre, which includes both "pubg" and "fortnite battle royale", being derived from the japanese film "battle royale". by the end of june 2018, the lawsuit had been closed by pubg, under undisclosed reasons.
battle royale game
during the latter part of "fortnite"s development, "playerunknown's battlegrounds" was released in march 2017 on personal computers in early access, and quickly became a popular and successful game, becoming the defining example of the battle royale genre. according to mustard, the epic team "loved battle royale games like [battlegrounds]", and explored how they could make a similar mode within "fortnite"s engine. they kept this mode in a separate development team from the main player versus environment modes for experimentation and as to not throw off the balance in the main game. the battle royale mode development was led by eric williamson with zack estep as production lead. their goal was to develop the battle royale mode quickly from the core "save the world" mode, putting off any complex features that weren't already in place as to launch the new mode as soon as possible; while they explored such potential ideas, they held off inclusion until after the main mode was launched. the development of the "battle royale" mode took about two months starting in july 2017 after the "save the world" mode had shipped, and was aided by the "unreal tournament" team. key differences for battle royale that differed from "save the world" included a more limited progression for weapons, a small subset of traps, and a smoother, more natural terrain for the maps. they also wanted to aim for games not taking longer than 25 minutes, which led to some decisions of which elements from "save the world" would not carry over. they had including "fortnite"s building mechanic for fortifications, not sure how players would use that since the safe zone would continue shrinking, but found quickly that the mechanic helped to distinguish the game from "battlegrounds" and was used by expert players frequently to win matches, and had since implemented more features to help players with rapidly constructing temporary bases.
fortnite battle royale