PUBG Corp.’s lawsuit against Fortnite has come to an end, with neither side quite pulling off a clear Victory Royale. The PUBG developers have decided to drop the lawsuit, inexplicably putting an end to the case.
News of the lawsuit surfaced about a month ago, with the people behind PUBG accusing Epic Games of ripping off their Battle Royale formula with Fortnite Battle Royale. The accusations began long before the official lawsuit began, however, when an exec of Bluehole - PUBG’s developer - pointed out similarities and threatened that further action may be taken.
PUBG Corp.'s grievance over the similarities can at least in part be attributed to the contrasting popularity of both games. While Fortnite quickly became the biggest game in the world after breaking multiple world records, PUBG's popularity began to decline, with its player count shrinking to half of what it was at its peak. Fortnite continues to dominate the industry, bringing in hundreds of millions in revenue a month across pretty much every gaming platform.
The sudden withdrawal by PUBG Corp. was reported by Bloomberg earlier today, but very few details are available at the time of writing. As such, there could be any number of motivations behind the move, even the possibility that the matter was settled between Epic and PUBG Corp. outside of the courtroom.
While the manner in which the case ended is surprising, PUBG Corp.’s failure to secure a clear win with the lawsuit certainly isn’t. Even disregarding the grey area of claiming ownership over the Battle Royale genre, the issue was a bit of a legal minefield; PUBG Corp. and Epic Games are both partly owned by Tencent, and PUBG was actually created using Epic’s Unreal Engine.
This news is just the latest in an ongoing spate of lawsuits in the industry at the moment, with Telltale Games currently defending against a claim from its co-founder, and Bethesda suing Warner Bros. for ripping off Fallout Shelter. Regardless of how exactly the matter ended between PUBG and Fortnite, gamers now have one less conflict to keep track of.
PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds is out now for iOS, Android, and PC, and is available on Xbox One through early access.
Source: Bloomberg