Is Fortnite Battle Royale a clone?

A popular discussion right now is, whether or not Fortnite’s Battle Royale game mode is a PUBG (Player Unknown’s Battlegrounds) clone. In this article I am going to give my opinion on this discussion and about the differences of the games.

So about two weeks ago Epic Games released its Battle Royale game mode for its newest game: ‘Fortnite’. In this game mode 100 players drop down from a bus on an island to gather weapons and items to kill other players to be the last man standing. This description would suggest that FBR (Fortnite Battle Royale) is very similar to PUBG, but once you get a little bit into FBR you immediately see how big of a difference there actually is.

One of the biggest and obvious differences is the ability to build your own structures and the fact that almost everything is destructible in FBR, this mechanic adds a lot of strategy to the game and in my opinion this mechanic makes the top ten much more exciting for FBR than it is for PUBG, where it usually is an open field with a couple of trees and rocks instead of a bunch of self-made structures.

There also are a couple of less obvious but very significant differences. First of all, there is the shooting mechanics Instead of needing pinpoint accuracy to snipe someone over a 500-meter distance for PUBG, most of Fortnite’s guns have a lot of random bullet spread which makes having great aim less important and usually makes the player with the better weapon outgun the other. Secondly, there is the map, the map is a lot smaller and much denser, to make up for this no vehicles in the game are drivable. There is also action everywhere since there are fewer places to drop which keeps the game exciting at all times. Lastly, there is a lot less customization, no weapon attachments, different kinds of armor, backpacks and clothing pieces and no character customization either.

There are many more differences that all have an impact on the game and which make the game quite unique, for example the art style. However, FBR is definitely inspired by PUBG and I also think Epic Games made this mode because of PUBG’s popularity. But this isn’t necessarily a bad thing, it just creates some healthy competition and will probably inspire even more companies to make Battle Royale games.

My final statement on this is: No, Fortnite Battle Royale is not a clone it shares similarities, but just as many differences. In my opinion, both games are for different audiences because they play a lot differently, Player Unknown Battleground being more in-depth and mechanically intense and FBR being more simplistic but at the same time more strategic. Whatever you think about FBR or PUBG, they are good games and I will be playing both for quite some time.

Sjaak is an enthusiastic game design student from The Netherlands who ha been gaming from a really young age together with his older brother. Sjaak also loves writing about games and sharing his opinions about them.