Is it fair to dislike Fortnite for riding PUBG's coattails?

I'm not saying I want the game to fail and go away, but it being such a blatant ripoff of PUBG and that being the thing that saved Fortnite from dying like Evolve, Battleborn, etc seems creatively bankrupt. I think it's laregly that aspect of "our own game was failing or doing mediocre so we copied someone else and now we're popular" is the annoying part to me. I root against it being more popular than PUBG, but since people do enjoy Fortnite I'm not saying I want it to go away.

I didn't like Fortnite because of the lame gunplay and for ripping off PUBG so hard. It's almost like being a sports fan of a team when you know one of their prominent players is dirty (Bruce Bowen with the Spurs or now Zaza and Green with The Warriors). I can't root for or be part of something when it seems morally dirty. I'm okay if something like Ghost Recon Wildlands or the next Battlefield added a BR mode too, if they add their own spin to it and because they're not relying on that concept alone to sell the game, since Wildlands is already a success and Battlefield is going to sell either way. I was curious how others felt about Fortnite's skyrocket to success.

For the record, I don't like PUBG that much, it's more about Fortnite being unoriginal and riding the coattails of another game because their original idea for their own game was failing.

Edit: I changed the name of thread since it seemed like saying "root for or against" was distracting people and they'd just respond to the title of the thread, rather than the overall post.

Pubg isn't exactly a beacon of originality itself.

Game feels completely different to PUBG despite having the same concept and objective. See also League of Legends and Dota

I wouldn't call it rooting against, but I do find Fortnite to be incredibly difficult to tolerate even with a few friends after so much time with PUBG. I do not like how any of the weapons feel, I much prefer first person so there is no corner peeking with the camera, I enjoy the larger map size and vehicles of PUBG, and I actually really, really, really hate the bunny hopping and the building aspect itself for how it cheats the skill of the actual gunfight...

I get you, this kind of thing sucks, but I believe it will eventually help the industry as whole to evolve. Maybe even specifically to improve PUBG, as far as I know Fortnite rolled out a 60fps mode on consoles now, there have been network improvements done to the engine for a 100 player match etc., these things can be used to improve PUBG as they are built on the same engine. That is if PUBG will ever climb from the cheater hole on PC and performance hole on Xbox.

Of course Fortnite will make way more money along the way, but that's capitalism for ya.

I don't know, I haven't played Fortnite but I hope it does well just for the sake of people who enjoy the game and those who work on it. Beyond that, actively hoping it does poorly seems a little strange. How does it negatively affect you in any way if a game you don't play is successful? If anything, you should hope Fortnite does even better so that PUBG has some long standing competition and continues to improve as well.

Games aren't sports teams, there doesn't need to be a "winner", and strong competition is only going to be good for us in the end. I want both PUBG and Fortnite to continue to be hugely successful so that the major publishers currently working on Battle Royale games (you know they are coming) have a higher bar to aim for.

This is the same sort of thing we saw with DayZ when it first got big, and it's something that's still kind of happening with Minecraft. It's not just Fortnite aping PUBG's style, and even if Fortnite disappeared tomorrow there'd be another game to take it's place.

China alone is putting out a slew of Battle Royale games in direct competition with PUBG that are mostly doing pretty decent numbers and is currently working to release a mobile Fortnite equivalent before the actual Fortnite mobile port has a chance to launch.

Proximity makes us more militant towards copying ideas. When ten pathfinding games come out a year we don't complain, because the originators of the genre precede them by decades. If Fortnite as it's famous now came out a year after PUBG, it wouldn't be so questionable, but compared to the way release windows usually work, this felt like a blink, because it wasn't a new game at all, just a new mode in a dwindling one. All the hardest work was done; they made a shrewd move by throwing their take on the genre out there ASAP, and it worked.

We absolutely should question success stories that have ridden on the coattails of another success story, but if people like it, and it creates a more friendly community than PUBG while retaining the stuff people want, you can kind of come to a more sympathetic outlook. I bet most people who love it didn't like PUBG hugely, or like both games quite a bit, so it's not like they've stolen a market away from PlayerUnknown (I'm just guessing there).

Maybe every developer deserves its successes. Pepsi and Coke are both pretty good!

Picking "teams", especially when it concerns creative pursuits, seems really weird to me. I don't know why anyone would root for anything other than "more, better stuff".

That said, the way in which Epic rolled Fortnite's BR mode out was kinda lousy.

https://www.gamespot.com/forums/system-wars-314159282/

I see what you're saying and I don't necessarily disagree with it, however, I also agree with the people above me and at the end of the day Fortnight is its own thing and I'm happy for the people that are into it. Even if the events of fortnight rub me the wrong way it is what it is and the market will ultimately decide what happens from here.

@mike: Keep that filth away from me!

Meh.

If you consider Fortnite a ripoff, then it's ripoffs all the way down. PUBG is not exactly original. They're also swimming in money, so I don't feel bad for them. They'll be fine.

What's the point of wishing someone or something not to succeed?

Fortnite's success takes nothing away from anyone. PUBG has made enough money already, I'm sure they'll be "just fine".

Fortnite is very different from PUBG.

Fortnite is free, this is SUPER IMPORTANT, also there's PS4-PC crossplay, it brings the player base (and my friends) further together.

Fortnite has united me with several old friends and I've had two LAN parties in the last three days.

I did not see any of this coming, so I wish nothing but best for Epic and Fortnite (I still suspect they will eventually ruin the game with bad gameplay patches).

PS. I've been playing Fortnite for about a week.

Well, it's not like I have some personal vendetta against the game or it keeps me up at night lol. If there's an originator and shameless copycats I'll always root for the original. I'd say that for movies, TV shows, books, etc too since creativity should be rewarded. Like I said in the original post, "root for or against" doesn't mean I want Fortnite to die. In this case, it's also a big studio with a dying game copying an indie studio with a successful one and I'm usually more inclined to root for the little guy. My sport's comparison wasn't about winning, it was about liking something that is dubious. The competition is good, that's obvious, but even if I liked Fortnite's gameplay I'd have a problem with playing a game that's blatantly ripping off another and riding the coattails of it because their own ideas failed.

I mean maybe? I feel like that should be PUBG's job and not mine as I have many others things more important to root against.

Some things to condider:

-Fortnite wasn't necessarily dead. From all accounts there was a player base that really enjoyed that game. If anything I feel bad for them since it seems like Battle Royale killed regular Fortnite.

-PUBG is only out on two platforms and costs $30. Fortnite is free to play and beat PUBG to console by several months. It's also the only game in town for PS4 players. It's no wonder it's "more popular" although that is underselling the huge impact and playerbase PUBG has.

-People didn't really have this reaction when Blizzard released Heroes of the Storm, when every shooter copied Modern Warfare 1 or when everything on Steam was a multiplayer survival game. For-profit creativity is built aroindbtaking popular ideas and repackaging them.

-While the concept is similar these aren't the same game. One has the trappings of a hardcore military sim, complete with factors such as bullet drop, while the other is a more fast paced "arcade" experience with a unique building mechanic. Some staff members, who have played both, have said they prefer Fortnite: BR to PUBG because of those key differences.

-Fortnite:BR isn't affecting your ability to enjoy PUBG. I haven't had trouble finding a match in PUBG, it's still getting regular updates and the developer is still doing well. Why wish that someone else's fun be ruined just because you don't like their thing?

TLDR: These games are different, there is enough room for more than one battle royale game and it's shitty to wish someone else's fun thing die just because you don't like it.

It is a little crappy that Epic copied one of the developers who were licencing their engine, so now they're making money off the licence AND raking it in with their enourmously popular BR clone, however i feel like they've done enough to the gameplay and are introducing enough different things to warrant its existence. I'm more interested in what Fortnite was originally going to be, i'm kind of burned out on BR after playing a ton of PUBG i'm back on COD now, but i'm interested in seeing where big budget developers take the concept, especially Ubi, their variety of competitive multiplayer games has been awesome.

I don't know if it's wrong per say, but there's better uses of your energy for sure. If for no other reason than I think this battle is over, Fortnite has won convincingly and will only continue to pull away from PUBG over time.

Personally I'd much prefer if PUBG was still the more popular game. I think PUBG is a better game at its core (instead of a cobbled mishmash of odd fitting mechanics just kinda slammed together on the fly) and I thought the way it got founded was some dirty business. That bothered me too. I certainly get that PUBG itself is a knockoff mod from other games, but it seemed super shady to rip off a business partner's concept like that.

And Fortnite has earned the success it has despite its beginnings. Epic is doing a much better job with the game than Bluehole is with PUBG. They seem like they handle cheaters better, it runs a lot smoother, the bugs seem a lot less frequent, they constantly innovate game modes and they don't frickin take the servers down during primetime once a week for three hours.

Couple that with the right price of free and beating PUBg to the console market, it's not hard to see why Fortnite is dominating.

PUBG's slow descent into a firm second place is it's own damn fault. That game set the world on fire in 2017 in ways most publishers and developers can only dream of and they were too busy doing whatever the hell they were doing to notice Fortnite creeping up on 'em and surpassing them. If it was like a straight 1 to 1 ripoff of PUBG, that would be one thing, but as similar as it is, Fortnite does a lot of cool, unique things it deserves credit for.

It's rise in popularity certainly didn't come from a "feel good" story, but the game seems solid.

I have no real interest in playing it for whatever reason. If friends of mine invited me to play I'd accept, but I don't see myself getting into it.

It's drab to me? Is that harsh?

Not at all, I think Fortnite deserves every ounce of it's success and I'm saying that as someone who doesn't like Battle Royale games.

It's not like PUBG was the first Battle Royale, there were multiple examples of the gamemode before it became popularised. The two games share the same framework but play completely differently. For one thing Fortnite is optimised and doesn't feel like shit to play and actually has content updates more often than every 4 months. EPIC communicates a huge amount with the community and is constantly making balance changes and adding new weapons, items, and locations. I look forward to PUBG fading into obscurity after blowing $25 on a barely functional game with no content that still has a huge amount of issues even after "leaving" early access.

@kingbonesaw: Hyperbolic much lol, and that comprasion doesn't work at all. Where did I say people shouldn't like Fortnite? I just said I personally have a problem playing and supporting a copycat game and I'd rather not see it be more popular than PUBG ... unless they do something cool/original themselves in order to deserve it rather than just being free and riding coattails.

Sure.

I like the original co-op and haven’t played PUBG or Fortnight’s Battle Royale mode, but you wouldn’t be the first to eschew something over it leaning into someone else’s work too heavily. It’s a valid critique in that it’s hard to pinpoint the line between evolution and blatent rip-off.

PUBG isn’t really a wholly new concept either. Entertainment is itterative. If anything, games borrowing concepts seems like a good way to not let the first to market rest on their laurels.

Look at all the music that wouldn’t be without The Beatles, Bowie, or Black Sabbath...B.B. King or Lead Belly...man, the letter B is kinda magical...

I want it to do well. The battle royale thing is a newish genre and i'm not about to write off every game in that genre as copying or a ripoff. There's room to do it different or better. I think Fortnite's take is different enough that calling it a ripoff is a stretch. I prefer PUBG, but everyone in my IRL circle wants nothing to do with it while enjoying the hell out of Fortnite BR. Epic found their angle and it's a massive success.

I feel like we should want more games to try it. That's how a genre evolves. It's interesting to me that the smallest/newest genres are are the ones people claim to be oversaturated. We didn't get to where we are today without being influenced by the past. I like PUBG enough that I want more games to try it, because I know that eventually new angles and mechanics will be discovered that improve the genre as a whole. I don't want to play one game forever.

As if Epic wasn't already on the receiving end of endless imitation after everyone and their mom put a "wave based survival" mode into their shooter franchise.

This is the Doom/GTA clone thing all over again.

I never said PUBG was the most original game ever, but you and the other people in here saying that seem to be missing the point. I think it's pretty obvious that the Epic guys saw their game not doing very well and they jumped on the popularity train of PUBG to save Fortnite. I doubt they said "Hey guys, remember those battle royale mods in Minecraft and ARMA? Lets add that to our game, I get the crazy feeling people might like it". Acting like they weren't copying PUBG just seems very disingenuous, since it's so blatant. On the otherhand, if a game "borrowing" so much from another bothers someone or not is subjective. I'm not saying it's bad thing if someone likes Fortnite, it's not a big deal, it's just not something I would do or support.

I think it would be silly.

Seems pointless at this point. Just don't play it and don't watch it.

I think Fortnite does deserve its success. Anyone can make a shameless rip-off but Epic Games has really supported Fortnite in a big way. I don't think there was a week last month where I did not hear about some update Fortnite was getting, whether it be a season battle pass or a 20 person team challenge mode.

Many games in the same genre are very similar. Think about fighting games. PUBG & Fortnite are more different than most any two fighting games. "Copying" as far as software goes is important to a certain extent. There is a line, for sure, but aside from cloning it's pretty much all good in my eyes.

Iteration, that's how you make a game... sensation.

There both owned by Tencent so there the real winners in this battle, And having the two fighting in the battle royal game space is fine, maybe then PUBG will step up and fix there shit. I don't see PUBG being a thing 3 years from now i see Fortnite take over that role or a still unannounced third big party. Also i think Bluehole is a terrible company only good at making Korean MMO's.

Also everything is a DOOMClone.

I just like good games. If borrowing ideas (even heavily) from other games gives us more good games, so be it.

Amen to this. I don't understand how in the most interconnected world of all time, people are obsessed with the very lost notion of originality. I promise you, you can trace a high majority of everything made back. Classes teach students in film history this exact thing. Everything is influenced by something, and we need to stop telling things they aren't good enough because they are using ideas that aren't their own. Execution of ideas is the most important thing.

As for the OP, personally I think a big reason Fornite hasn't failed is that it's fun. I've played tons of it, and enjoyed it fine. It certainly is very PUBG, but the building systems I think give it a different set of rules, combine that with the fact that it's free to play and I think it could be around for a while.

I mean, I prefer pubg overall to Fortnite but Epic has done way better supporting Fortnite in a shorter amount of time. Fortnite is way more polished and looks a lot better even though I don't care for the art style. There also isn't anything all that original about pubg, it just took an existing mode and popularized it. Kinda dumb to hope for Fortnite to fail

It's sold ten's of millions of copies. It's gotten it's reward.

It's also sat on it's laurels compared to what Epic are doing with Fortnite. Compare the roadmaps of the two and the amount of stuff that Fortnite has added to the game in the shorter time span that it's BR mode has been around and PUBG start to look lazy and slow.

As for the original question - it's dumb to root against a game. They're not sports teams. They're companies. Player Unknown isn't some lad who made Battlegrounds all by himself. He took the idea from Survivor GameZ and made a mod. Then another mod and then eventually got picked up by a Korean company who thought they could make a buck with this idea and brought him in. People just associate the little engine that could mentality because his "name" is on the box.

@deathstriker: "It's more about Fortnite being unoriginal."

The game introduced a brand new mechanic which we've never seen? How is that unoriginal. Don't think it's a game like PUBG only because you jump out of a plane (bus) and fight against 99 people. Beyond that there are about 0 things like PUBG in the game.

Yeah, although Fortnite BR borrows its primary conceit from those that came before it, Fortnite also does something (and looks nothing like) none of these other games do and that's cute everything up, add the construction mechanic and constantly put on limited time events that change up the feel of the game in small ways.

I have zero experience with this genre outside of Giant Bomb's coverage, but I really don't see what the problem is with Epic putting this mode into their game just because the PUBG developers licensed their engine. If I were a pastry maker and you bought my dough and made an extremely popular pizza out of it, I'd feel a little stupid if I didn't try making my own pizza with my own dough.

I will say I'm pretty annoyed by the culture surrounding Fortnite. I feel like I can't escape the game and I don't know of anyone in my actual life that plays the game, yet I see references to the game at least twice a day on social media and whenever I go to a whitelisted site it seems like Fortnite is definitely going to be one of the ads. When I couldn't escape PUBG it was just because the media outlets I followed couldn't stop playing the game, which I suppose was its own sort of hell but I will say I found that game more engaging to watch than what I've seen from Fortnite, though that could also be because the GB guys aren't as good at the building aspect of Fortnite.

@soulcake: I doubt Fortnite will be taking over the genre. Most people I know didn't like the shooting and that seems to be a common issue from reading online. I heard they were going to overhaul their gunplay and they'd have to change a lot of things about it. I played it for a couple weeks after it came out and it felt like a PvP Sunset Overdrive, and that is not a compliment.

@deathstriker: PUBG is a "copy cat game." Your logic here makes no sense.

Rooting against Fortnite for being unoriginal when it's probably the most original game in the battle royale genre is absurd to me.

There were building blocks of the battle royale genre before PUBG (already talked about that in another post in this thread), but it's not a copycat. I don't mind taking ideas and making them your own... Tarantino is one of my favorite directors and does that ALL the time. I like Rainbow Six Siege and it's borrowing some stuff from Counter Strike and SWAT, but it's definitely its own game with its own mechanics and ideas. I don't think there's really any denying Epic wanted to ride the wave of PUBG popularity since Fortnite wasn't very popular before they took the idea and they wanted to save their game.

As far as people mentioning similar games and competition... that is a good thing, but I think what we see between Destiny/Division/Borderlands/Anthem is a better example of that or Battlefield/COD. PUBG and Fortnite is more like Pacific Rim going to theaters then Atlantic Rim goes straight to DVD/bluray a month later or Transformers/Transmorphers.

@deathstriker: It seems like you are ok with every other game ripping each other off but this one. You are of course entitled to your opinion.

@adamlcook: Not at all, but I do see the difference between "being inspired by" and "straight up copying/pasting" ideas.

I think you greatly underestimate how popular Fortnite is with the casual gaming audience. This thing is mainstream in a way PUBG will never be. I have a group of friends who are the kind who only turn up for FIFA/Call of Duty every year and they are in deep. It's even getting on to daytime TV, people are doing Fortnite emotes as sports celebrations, and is way bigger than the Giant Bomb crew have any clue about.

When you combine free with the fact that it's the first battle royale type experience PS4 users can get, and way more polished than PUBG on Xbox, you can see easily how it got huge. It actually isn't bad either (and I vastly prefer PUBG). PUBG only really got all these huge numbers because China got into it and some ridiculous percentage of its userbase is just bots farming skins to make money.

Then again, I'm not saying something will never come along and dethrone it, but this thing is the real deal for now.

@deathstriker: What part of PUBG is not a copy and paste of the games it was made from? Which mechanic does it use that separates it from the pack in your eyes? Considering it was a mod first it is hard for me to understand how it has that many more mechanics than the game its was spawned from.