It’s official, the PUBG developers have filed a lawsuit against Epic Games, the creator of Fortnite. This is on the grounds of Copyright Infringement. PUBG has previously sued mobile games which are very similar to the style and look of PUBG successfully but nothing to the scale of Fortnite.
In September of last year PUBG Corp said it was “Concerned that Fortnite may be replicating the experience for which PUBG is known”. PUBG Corp also said that PUBG was the “first standalone Battle Royale survival shooter game.”
This seems like a strange thing to have added as there have been Battle Royale games previously but not ones that are standalone. So it seems like PUBG Corp are suing over the fact that Fortnite has a Battle Royale Mode. However Fortnite is not a standalone battle royale game like PUBG is. Fortnite’s less popular ‘Save the World’ game mode is also a large part of the game.
Another strange element to this whole situation is the fact that PUBG is run on Unreal Engine. This is the Engine that is owned by Epic Games. PUBG licensed the rights to use the Unreal Engine from Epic Games when they made the game.
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Fortnite has gone from strength to strength over the past few months whereas PUBG’s player base is slowly declining. Many reports saying that many of the players are moving over to Fortnite. Earlier in the year Fortnite’s number of players overtook that of PUBG and seem to have stayed that way.
This lawsuit that has been filed against Fortnite is only limited to Korea and when asked to comment on the situation by GameSpot an Epic Games rep said this, “We don’t comment on ongoing litigation.”. We are unsure as to whether PUBG Corp will be successful in this lawsuit or not. We shall see how the situation unfolds over the coming months.