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This is why I felt bad for the PUBG devs, who seemed to have successfully pushed the Battle Royale genre with a game that wasn't perfect but that they put a lot

This is why I felt bad for the PUBG devs, who seemed to have successfully pushed the Battle Royale genre with a game that wasn't perfect but that they put a lot of effort into, only to be outsold in days by Fortnite upon its release.

skocznymroczny 6y ago
Arguably, DayZ was the first to popularize the battle royale genre.
jcranmer 6y ago
> only to be outsold in days by Fortnite upon its release. I'm not sure it was days, but the part that's kind of galling is that Fortnite was a wave defense game that had some pretty lackluster reviews, so the developers instead turned it into a battle royale game because of PUBG's unexpected popularity, and it was the battle royale version that made waves.
- coralreef 6y ago
  The fact that it was free was important in its popularity as well, where PUBG still retails for $15 USD today (on sale)
kbenson 6y ago
Given that PUBG has apparently sold 50 million copies across PC and Xbox (as of two years ago!)[1], and the amount of time and effort that goes into Fortnite continuously to keep it fresh and the people playing it happy, I'm not sure that PUBG hasn't payed a higher dividend on investment percentage-wise, even if it's of lower total amount. Bottom line, I'm not really really feeling bad for PUBG at all. It's kind of like feeling bad for Minecraft because a lot of people are playing Fortnite now. Minecraft made most its money on the purchase. There's some loss in future revenue because of the network effect, but they probably made most the money they were going to make from you already (and to bring it back to PUBG, it's not for everyone. I didn't let my currently 10 year old son play it, but I let him play Fortnite, even a year ago when this was a discussion). 1: https://www.polygon.com/2018/6/19/17478476/playerunknowns-battlegrounds-sales-pubg-number-of-players https://www.polygon.com/2018/6/19/17478476/playerunknowns-ba...
- Grimm665 6y ago
  I see your point but Minecraft didn't get usurped in popularity by a game that ripped off it's core gameplay loop. As another commenter mentioned, I did forget about DayZ, so maybe Battle Royale wasn't an entirely original concept from the PUBG developers, but I think it's fair to say Epic Games saw the popularity of the genre, pivoted their lackluster game into the genre, and then undercut PUBG on price to rise in popularity. I guess that's just business, but I do hold sympathy for the PUBG devs.
  - kbenson 6y ago
    Okay, but are we really considering the Battle Royale gameplay features all that innovative? If a large map you can find stuff on that eventually shrinks qualifies as something enough to differentiate it, doesn't Fortnite's building mechanic qualify enough to differentiate it? I don't play either game (unfortunately my system needs a refresh), but from what I've seen of my son playing Fortnite the fights are like nothing I've seen in an FPS before. There's a mad dash to build fortifications right in front of people as quickly as possible as well as break through and navigate these fortifications while under fire. To outside eyes at least, the experience looks qualitatively different. > I think it's fair to say Epic Games saw the popularity of the genre, pivoted their lackluster game into the genre, and then undercut PUBG on price to rise in popularity. To my eyes, Fortnite differs in a few very important ways which makes it much more complex than one company copying another and undercutting them. - It's targetted at a wider range of ages. e.g. it's much more acceptable for parents to allow a younger set of kids to play. - It has a building mechanic, which changes both the strategy (pre-battle and route planning) and tactics (on-the-fly shielding during live fire) of a game. - They are constantly updating it. I'm not sure how many "seasons" they are in now, but not only are the changes they introduce often fairly large, the end of season events are quite the spectacle, from the one or two I've seen after the fact. If you combine that with the fact that PUBG seems to have made at least a few hundred million dollars on what I expect is a few million (or a couple tens of millions at most) investment, and I'm not really all that sorry for them. They had an idea, they executed on it and made a bundle of money, and then someone else iterated on it and happened to make a whole lot more money. What's the alternative, Epic not change Fortnite and all the people that play for free and all the younger players and all the people that like the building mechanic just lose out? I just don't see a situation where PUBG came out on top where more people are better off, and helping PUBG devs make billions instead of hundreds of millions isn't something I think we need to optimize for as a society, nor really care about.
perseusmandate 6y ago
PUBG was itself a commercialized version of (arguably better) Arma 3 mods with a bunch of royalty free assets + microtransactions. It still was printing money and top of the Steam charts for many months- I think it ended up being a great outcome

skocznymroczny 6y ago

Arguably, DayZ was the first to popularize the battle royale genre.

jcranmer 6y ago

> only to be outsold in days by Fortnite upon its release. I'm not sure it was days, but the part that's kind of galling is that Fortnite was a wave defense game that had some pretty lackluster reviews, so the developers instead turned it into a battle royale game because of PUBG's unexpected popularity, and it was the battle royale version that made waves.

coralreef 6y ago
The fact that it was free was important in its popularity as well, where PUBG still retails for $15 USD today (on sale)

kbenson 6y ago

Given that PUBG has apparently sold 50 million copies across PC and Xbox (as of two years ago!)[1], and the amount of time and effort that goes into Fortnite continuously to keep it fresh and the people playing it happy, I'm not sure that PUBG hasn't payed a higher dividend on investment percentage-wise, even if it's of lower total amount. Bottom line, I'm not really really feeling bad for PUBG at all. It's kind of like feeling bad for Minecraft because a lot of people are playing Fortnite now. Minecraft made most its money on the purchase. There's some loss in future revenue because of the network effect, but they probably made most the money they were going to make from you already (and to bring it back to PUBG, it's not for everyone. I didn't let my currently 10 year old son play it, but I let him play Fortnite, even a year ago when this was a discussion). 1: https://www.polygon.com/2018/6/19/17478476/playerunknowns-battlegrounds-sales-pubg-number-of-players https://www.polygon.com/2018/6/19/17478476/playerunknowns-ba...

Grimm665 6y ago
I see your point but Minecraft didn't get usurped in popularity by a game that ripped off it's core gameplay loop. As another commenter mentioned, I did forget about DayZ, so maybe Battle Royale wasn't an entirely original concept from the PUBG developers, but I think it's fair to say Epic Games saw the popularity of the genre, pivoted their lackluster game into the genre, and then undercut PUBG on price to rise in popularity. I guess that's just business, but I do hold sympathy for the PUBG devs.
- kbenson 6y ago
  Okay, but are we really considering the Battle Royale gameplay features all that innovative? If a large map you can find stuff on that eventually shrinks qualifies as something enough to differentiate it, doesn't Fortnite's building mechanic qualify enough to differentiate it? I don't play either game (unfortunately my system needs a refresh), but from what I've seen of my son playing Fortnite the fights are like nothing I've seen in an FPS before. There's a mad dash to build fortifications right in front of people as quickly as possible as well as break through and navigate these fortifications while under fire. To outside eyes at least, the experience looks qualitatively different. > I think it's fair to say Epic Games saw the popularity of the genre, pivoted their lackluster game into the genre, and then undercut PUBG on price to rise in popularity. To my eyes, Fortnite differs in a few very important ways which makes it much more complex than one company copying another and undercutting them. - It's targetted at a wider range of ages. e.g. it's much more acceptable for parents to allow a younger set of kids to play. - It has a building mechanic, which changes both the strategy (pre-battle and route planning) and tactics (on-the-fly shielding during live fire) of a game. - They are constantly updating it. I'm not sure how many "seasons" they are in now, but not only are the changes they introduce often fairly large, the end of season events are quite the spectacle, from the one or two I've seen after the fact. If you combine that with the fact that PUBG seems to have made at least a few hundred million dollars on what I expect is a few million (or a couple tens of millions at most) investment, and I'm not really all that sorry for them. They had an idea, they executed on it and made a bundle of money, and then someone else iterated on it and happened to make a whole lot more money. What's the alternative, Epic not change Fortnite and all the people that play for free and all the younger players and all the people that like the building mechanic just lose out? I just don't see a situation where PUBG came out on top where more people are better off, and helping PUBG devs make billions instead of hundreds of millions isn't something I think we need to optimize for as a society, nor really care about.

perseusmandate 6y ago

PUBG was itself a commercialized version of (arguably better) Arma 3 mods with a bunch of royalty free assets + microtransactions. It still was printing money and top of the Steam charts for many months- I think it ended up being a great outcome