Without a doubt, the popularity of PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds continues to grow, as the title recently managed to reach over 3 million players on Xbox One just about a week ago. Of course, with such a huge pool of gamers flocking to the title, there are bound to be some rotten apples in the bunch, and the development team at PUBG Crafting Guide Corp has confirmed just that by revealing its intentions to ban over 100,000 cheaters on the title’s PC vers
Formerly hosted by Spike as The Spike Video Game Awards, Keighley went on to produce his own independent award ceremony. Each year since its inception in 2014, a slew of games from that year have been nominated for various categories, ranging from Best Shooter or Best Mobile Game, to the more coveted Developer of the Year, and of course Game of the Year. The games are selected by a secret panel of some sort, with the winners being at least partially voted on by the pub
What many gaming fans disagreed with in the original statement was the implication that Bluehole had some type of ownership over battle royale or last man standing game modes. Kim made it clear that the developer isn’t in any way claiming that. “It’s not for us to even comment,” he said. Kim then reiterated that the focus of Bluehole’s apparent frustration is Epic Games, who specifically mentioned PUBG in its marketing materials for the new gameplay m
Moving forward, Kim hopes to start an official conversation between Bluehole and Epic Games. He again stated that this entire situation is only a problem because Epic Games makes the engine Bluehole uses, and that the developer pays “a large amount of royalties” to Epic Games. “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,” stated Kim. “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 proje
Epic Games has yet to respond to Bluehole’s harshly worded statement, but fans of both games are already weighing in. Some argue that Epic should have seen this coming, as the developer directly names Battlegrounds as an inspiration, and that Bluehole was always going to take issue with it. But others say that Bluehole is in the wrong, arguing that the concept of battle royale modes are nothing new. Grand Theft Auto Online has a battle royale mode for example, while PlayerUnknown himself, Brendan Greene, actually consulted on H1Z1 ‘s battle royale mode before Battlegrounds was relea
Moreover, the Bluehole executive takes issue with Epic Games’ promotion of the Fortnite Battle Royale mode. In the announcement post for the Fortnite update, Epic specifically states that it “loves” battle royale games like PUBG . In the game mode’s announcement trailer, Epic’s creative director Ronald Mustard references both PUBG and H1Z1 (which has a standalone battle royale mode called King of the Kill ) as areas of inspirat
It seems that the comparisons have not gone unnoticed by the PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds ‘ ( PUBG ) team either, as today, developer Bluehole sent out a press release criticizing Epic Games over its Fortnite update. Bluehole vice president Chang Han Kim says, “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.” Kim also reveals that Bluehole has had “an ongoing relationship with Epic Games throughout PUBG ’s development as they are the creators of [Unreal Engine 4], the engine we licensed for the ga
If this project sees success, will we start to see other hero shooters like Overwatch attempt a battle royale mode, or as Chisam says, “battleground” style modes to compete with Paladins ? Maybe a year from now we will see an “Overwatch: Battlegrounds” and have the discussion of whether they are stealing from Paladi
However, the developers of PUBG have been known to defend their territory in the past, taking issue with Fortnite borrowing too heavily from their gameplay . The name is one thing, but if gameplay is the discussion, Paladins: Battlegrounds should have nothing to worry about, as it seems to set itself far apart from its competitors. As a hero shooter, the normal 100 players in battle royale will have special powers and abilities that give them unique advantages. As the first game to mix the two, this game seems to build its own category rather than fit in with its predecess
Kim continued, explaining why the company was the concern. From Kim’s vantage point, and that of Bluehole as a whole, Epic Games released a game mode “that is similar to [Bluehole] that has similar elements,” and that’s a problem considering the two companies’ professional relationship. “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,” explained Kim. “Epic Games always promoted their licensing models [saying], ‘We want to support the success of 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 s