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Bluehole Studios’ executive producer, Changhan Kim, reproached Epic Games for adding a Battle Royale mode to Fortnite and for using PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds as a way to promote the mode in Fortnite, especially doing so without talking with Bluehole first.

Kim spoke with PC Gamer, explaining…

“[…] 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. […]

 

“What I think is, they should have at least came to us before making it and had a discussion with us.

 

“So, 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.”

Basically, Kim feels Epic should have come to Bluehole first before just throwing out a Battle Royale mode in Fortnite, especially since Bluehole is paying Epic Games royalties to use the Unreal Engine 4.

As stated above, Kim feels as if Epic Games could use technology that Bluehole has perfected and improved for the Unreal Engine, and then plop it into Fortnite and profit from it.

Kim states that they’re currently reaching out to Epic to get this sorted, but he also mentions that they didn’t appreciate that Epic was using PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds by name as a way to promote the Battle Royale mode for Fortnite, telling PC Gamer…

“It was in their promotional video that was posted on Twitter and they would openly mention that they were fans of PUBG, we wanted to make this battle royale game mode, and that kind of gave the impression that we were officially involved in this.

 

“[…] players like, “Oh it’s cool, now we get to play PUBG in Fortnite”, and there was nothing we could do about it, because it was depicted that we were officially involved.”

So basically, Bluehole got really butthurt that Epic was making a mode for Fortnite based on PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds.

The thing is… it’s all derivative. PUBG is based on H1Z1, and H1Z1 was clearly inspired by DayZ, and DayZ was so obviously inspired by The Walking Dead.

it seems silly to start pointing fingers at copycats. Even if Epic did decide to use what Bluehole perfected in the Unreal Engine 4 for their own game, who cares? If it improves on the Battle Royale formula then it’s good for the industry overall. Although, since it’s added to a game like Fortnite, I doubt there’s going to be any improvements at all.