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PUBG and Fortnite – The Drama Continues - General Columns
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
PUBG and Fortnite – The Drama Continues - General Columns
This week Fortnite launched their Battle Royale expansion giving players the chance to compete against each other in a hunger games style scenario. Many people in video games will try new things and usually see modes of games coming into play from other games in the market. This is how it has been for years. That is until the news that Player Unknown Battlegrounds is clearly not happy with the Battle Royale style content. So what happens now?
Comments
If so, someone needs to give the team behind PUBG a swift kick in the ass.
This is one of those times where review bombs might be needed to send a message to the team behind the title. With Valve's histogram system, it would be quite clear to everyone what the underlying message is behind it.
http://www.pcgamer.com/pubg-exec-clarifies-objection-to-fortnite-battle-royale-its-not-about-the-idea-itself-its-about-epic-games/
Seems the specific issue is that PUBG is paying royalties to Epic for using their engine, and now Epic is creating a direct competitor. That complicates things.
People keep reading this as they are laying claim to battle royale. And they are not.
PC Gamer: So it's not the mode you guys have an issue with. From your statement or your press release earlier today, it said that there were similarities in the UI, and the other things mentioned were the gameplay and structural replication in the battle royale mode. Can you specify exactly, if you're not objecting to a battle royale mode in another game, then what do you mean by concerns about gameplay?
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.
I agree, it's a more complicated issue than first glance, but Epic spent the money to create their engine, so they can make whatever game they want with it regardless of who might be using the engine in the same genre.
Now, if they started trying to renegotiate the royalties in a way that would be crippling to PUBG, there's a legitimate concern there.
If there are no documents signed in advance that Epic won't do similar titles/modes etc... then I don't see what PUBG are expecting.
Should Epic not do any games in these genres because they are getting royalties from companies that use their product... That's just idiotic.
I really hope that PUBG gets a bit of negative response from this and players boycott the game if even for 2 days. If developers stop stealing ideas from other games we will see less and less good titles... I know that by logic that should motivate developers to create new stuff, but the fact is that there's a ton of good stuff that other good games or games that failed and closed down thought of and other developers picked those ideas and made them better, PUBG being one such thing.
Lets be honest here, in no way is Fortnights BR going to be any sort of competition to them. Period.
No disrespect to the Epic team, heck they even said they made the game in homage to PUBG , but PUBG is probably the top played game on Steam and Twitch, if they honestly think the game is going to even touch their number or players, they must be smoking some strong ass shit at BHole
If so, then I think the arguing for similarity to PUBG is paper thin. It would be much more dissimilar to PUBG than the large majority of battle royale games. I don't think PUBG has much ground here - it would be terrible if they went to court and the court ruled in PUBG's favour.
But at the end of the day that really doesnt matter. They choose to use Epic Games Unreal Engine instead of making there own engine and there is ZERO that says Epic Games can not make any type of game they choose to do so.
I get the feeling that PUBG is scared and that is what is driving all this drama. They feel that Fortnites Free to Play Battle Royal Game is going to be a real competer to them and they should feel that way. That have been struggling with lag issues and hit detection issues and from the early tests of the Fortnite Battle Royal show that epic has there house in order already (I didnt see or notice any lag - but I could be wrong there).
And if Epic Games chooses to push it as a esports style game, they could really get behind tournaments and such as money is no real issue at this stage for Epic Games and they could easily match PUBG value for value and/or exceeding that in any tournament rewards.
The company who develops Fortnite created the Unreal Engine, base the claim surrounding that, what would be the responsibility of the creator of the engine because they develop a direct competitor under the same engine?
The only issue I can see is if the license stated Epic will provide engine support and service X Y Z, and then failed to do so (intentionally or not). I think you could say this damaged the value of the PUBG brand and could claim some reparations, which would be pretty substantial, given the popularity of the game. But there is no evidence of anything like that happening - and judging by the interview posted a few posts above, I don't think Epic violated the delivery of their licensed service. PUBG seems to be talking in hypotheticals.
However, it was worth noting that PUBG wasn't specifically trying to say they have exclusive rights to battle royale in general.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯