Instruct: Given a question, retrieve relevant documents that answer the question.
Query: Is Fortnite a Battle Royal game?
As a battle royale game, Fortnite Battle Royale features up to a hundred players, either alone, in duos, or in squads of up to four players, attempting to be the last player or group alive by killing other players or evading them, while staying within a constantly shrinking safe zone to prevent taking lethal damage from being outside it. Players start with no intrinsic advantages, and must scavenge for weapons and armor to gain the upper hand on their opponents. The game adds the construction element from Fortnite; players can break down most objects in the game world to gain resources they can use to build fortifications as part of their strategy. Limited-time modes are cycled through the game that introduce experimental or unconventional gameplay but otherwise follow the battle royale "last player standing" goal. While the game world remains the same for all matches, Epic presents a seasonal approach that may make small or major changes to the game world, including simultaneous single-time events that occur on all game servers. The game features cross-platform play between the platforms that was limited for the first five seasons, before the restrictions were eased.
Epic Games had released "Fortnite", a cooperative survival game, into early access near the release of "Battlegrounds". Epic saw the potential to create their own battle royale mode, and by September 2017, released the free-to-play "Fortnite Battle Royale" which combined some of the survival elements and mechanics from the main "Fortnite" game with the Battle Royale gameplay concept. The game saw similar player counts as "Battlegrounds", with twenty million unique players reported by Epic Games by November 2017. Bluehole expressed concern at this move, less due to being a clone of "Battlegrounds", but more so that they had been working with Epic Games for technical support of the Unreal Engine in "Battlegrounds", and thus they were worried that "Fortnite" may be able to include planned features to their battle royale mode before they could release those in "Battlegrounds". "Battleground" developer, PUBG Corporation, filed a lawsuit against Epic in South Korea in January 2018 claiming "Fortnite Battle Royale" infringements on "Battlegrounds" copyrights. By the end of June 2018, the lawsuit had been closed by PUBG, under undisclosed reasons.
Near the same time that Epic released Fortnite into early access, PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds had become a worldwide phenomenon, having sold over 5 million copies three months from its March 2017 release, and drawing strong interest in the battle royale genre. Epic recognized that with the Fortnite base game, they could also do a battle royale mode, and rapidly developed their own version atop Fortnite in about two months.[12] By September 2017, Epic was ready to release this as a second mode from "Save the World" in the paid-for earlier access, but then later decided to release it as a free game, Fortnite Battle Royale, supported with microtransactions. This version quickly gained players, with over 10 million players during its first two weeks of release, and leading Epic to create separate teams to continue the Fortnite Battle Royale development apart from the "Save the World" mode, outside of common engine elements and art assets.[13][14] This allowed Fortnite Battle Royale to expand to other platforms otherwise not supported by the "Save the World" mode, including iOS and Android mobile devices and the Nintendo Switch.[15][16]
In January 2018, Bluehole's PUBG Corp., the South Korean company behind PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds (PUBG), filed a lawsuit against Epic Games, claiming that Fortnite Battle Royale was a copyright infringement of Battlegrounds; they accused Epic Games of copying PUBG's user interface and game items.[167][168] According to Korea Times, market observers predicted that there would be little likelihood of Bluehole winning the case, as it would be difficult to establish the originality of PUBG in court due to the battle royale game genre, which includes both PUBG and Fortnite Battle Royale, being derived from the 2000 Japanese film Battle Royale.[169] The case has since closed, with PUBG Corp. dropping the lawsuit in June 2018 under undisclosed reasons.[170]
Fortnite Battle Royale has also become a cultural online phenomenon, with several celebrities reporting they play the game, and athletes using Fortnite emotes as victory celebrations.[24] A notable streaming event in March 2018, with streamer Ninja playing Fortnite Battle Royale alongside Drake, Travis Scott, Kim DotCom, and Pittsburgh Steelers wide receiver JuJu Smith-Schuster, broke viewership records for Twitch to date, and led to Epic arranging a Fortnite Battle Royale pro–am with 50 pairs of streamers and professional players matched with celebrities at the Electronic Entertainment Expo 2018 in June 2018.[25][26][27] Epic Games is working to develop organized eSports competitions around Fortnite Battle Royale, including a Fortnite World Cup tournament in 2019.[28]
"Battlegrounds" is considered the defining game of the battle royale game genre due to its popularity, even though other games, including Greene's previous mods, were already on the market. After its large early access sales numbers, other games followed with battle royale mechanics, with either existing games that added a battle royale mode or fully new games. Notably, Epic Games updated their in-development title "Fortnite", a sandbox-based survival game that included the ability to construct fortifications, to include a battle royale mode that retained the fortification aspects. Known as "Fortnite Battle Royale", Epic later released it as a standalone free-to-play game in September 2017. Shorty after its release, Bluehole expressed concerns about the game, acknowledging that while they cannot claim ownership of the battle royale genre, they feared that since they had been working with Epic for technical support of the Unreal engine, that they may have had a heads-up on planned features they wanted to bring to "Battlegrounds" and could release it first. PUBG Corporation later filed a lawsuit against Epic Games Korea in January 2018, alleging that "Fortnite Battle Royale" was infringing the copyright of "Battlegrounds". However, the lawsuit was closed by PUBG in June 2018 for undisclosed reasons.
There are various modifications that can be implemented atop the fundamentals of the battle royale. For example, "Fortnite" introduced a temporary mode in an event which is 50-versus-50 player mode in its "Fortnite Battle Royale" free-to-play game; players are assigned one of the two teams, and work with their teammates to collect resources and weapons towards constructing fortifications as the safe area of the game shrinks down, with the goal to eliminate all the players on the other team.
Fortnite Battle Royale's primary distinction from other battle royale games is the building system, which originated from the original Fortnite survival game. Nearly all objects in the environment can be destroyed and harvested for materials (wood, stone, and metal), which can then be used to build fortifications of limited durabilities, such as walls, ramps, floors, and roofs, which can be used to help traverse the map, protect the player from gunfire, or slow down progression of other players. Weaker pieces can be destroyed in a few hits, but can be built quickly, while stronger pieces can withstand more punishment, but take longer to build.
At the time of Tencent's investment into Epic in 2012, Epic Games had a US$825 million valuation.[119] Because of Fortnite Battle Royale, Epic's valuation increased to US$4.5 billion as of May2018.[120] Bloomberg raised the estimate to around US$8.5 billion by the end of 2018 should Fortnite Battle Royale reach US$2 billion during the year.[119] Partially due to the influx of revenue from Fortnite Battle Royale, Epic reduced its portion of sales it collected from the Unreal Engine Marketplace from 30% to 12% in July 2018, applying that retroactively to past sales.[121]
In those two months of development, Epic's plan was to include Battle Royale within the paid Fortnite game, and originally announced this approach publicly in early September 2017. Only two weeks before it was released did Epic decide to make it a separate free-to-play title, fearing that having it as part of the paid package would slow down the growth of the title.[37] Epic announced this change formally about a week after first announcing Battle Royale, allowing those that had purchased early access to Fortnite in anticipation of this mode to request refunds.[38] This release, which beat out Battlegrounds to consoles, caused some concern with Battlegrounds developer Bluehole, as they had been working closely with Epic for Unreal engine support in Battlegrounds, and were worried that Fortnite might be able to include planned features to their Battle Royale mode before they could release those in Battlegrounds.[39][40][41]
In June 2015, Epic agreed to allow Epic Games Poland depart the company and sold its shares in the studio; the studio reverted to their former name, People Can Fly. The "Bulletstorm" IP was retained by People Can Fly who has since launched a remastered version called "Bulletstorm: Full Clip Edition" on April 7, 2017, published by Gearbox Software.
By July 2017, "Fortnite" was finally in a state for public play. Epic launched the title through a paid early access then, with a full free-to-play release expected in 2018. Following on the popularity of "PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds", a battle royale game released earlier in 2017, Epic developed a variant of "Fortnite" called "Fortnite Battle Royale", which was released in September 2017 as a free-to-play title across computer, console, and mobile platforms. "Fortnite Battle Royale" quickly gained an audience, amassing over 125 million players by May 2018 with estimates of having earned over by July 2018 through microtransactions. Epic Games, which had been valued at around at the time of Tencent's acquisition, was estimated to be worth in July 2018 due to "Fortnite Battle Royale", and expected to surpass by the end of 2018 with projected growth of the game. Due to the success of "Fortnite", Epic announced it would be ending support for "Paragon", its other free-to-play title, to focus on supporting "Fortnite".
Part of the game's success is also considered to be related to its impact on social media.[102] By March 2018, Fortnite Battle Royale became the most-viewed game on Twitch, exceeding the average-concurrent viewership numbers of League of Legends and Battlegrounds.[129] One notable streamer was Tyler "Ninja" Blevins, who gained a large number of subscribers by March 2018, in part due to his skill and through promotions on Twitch that offered free Fortnite Battle Royale cosmetic items; by March 2018, he was estimated to be making US$500,000 a month from his streaming revenue.[130] YouTube streamer Rubén Doblas Gundersen held a Fortnite Battle Royale match with 99 other well-known YouTube streamers in late March, which drew over 1.1 million viewers, making it one of the most-watched gaming YouTube streams.[131] The Fortnite Pro-Am event held at E3 2018 was estimated to have drawn over 1.3 million views across Twitch and other streaming services, making it one of the highest-viewed live-streamed event to date.[132]
Fortnite Battle Royale has been jokingly referred to as the honomyn "Fork Knife" on social media, believed to have originated with people, unfamiliar with the game, described their friends and family spending time playing the game.[141] Epic added a harvestable, non-playable "Fork Knife" food truck to the game map as the term gained popularity.[3] In September 2018, Fortnite was featured as a question on the game show Jeopardy!,[142] and was spoofed in a skit on the September 29, 2018, episode of Saturday Night Live.[143] The South Park episode "The Scoots" featured the cast wearing Fortnite-based Halloween costumes.[144] In The Big Bang Theory episode "The Citation Negation", Bernadette attempts to learn how to play Fortnite Battle Royale to beat Howard.[145] Fortnite also makes an easter egg appearance in the Disney animated film Ralph Breaks the Internet.[146] Fortnite was a central focal point on the 2018 YouTube Rewind year retrospective, and included an appearance by Ninja.[147]
In May 2018, Epic announced a partnership with sports apparel manufacturing company IMG to produce official Fortnite-themed clothing.[77] A Hasbro-licensed Fortnite Battle Royale-themed version of Monopoly was announced for release by late 2018; the Fortnite Monopoly game reflects some elements of the video game, such as the money being replaced with player's lives, and the ability to protect properties on the board with walls.[78] Further, with this deal, Hasbro will produce Fortnite-based Nerf blasters, which are expected to reach retail in 2019.[79] Funko will release a series of Fortnite themed Pop! figurines by late 2018.[80]
The game is supported through microtransactions to purchase in-game currency that can be used towards these upgrades. A standalone battle royale game version, "Fortnite Battle Royale", was released for the same platforms in September 2017. Following the release, the player-versus-environment mode was officially distinguished as "Save the World".
With the popularity of Fortnite Battle Royale by the start of 2018, Epic split off a separate development team to focus on improvements for this mode.[42] Epic said that their attention to Fortnite was causing some of their other games to see lower player populations, leading them to reduce development efforts on these games, particularly Paragon.[43] By the end of January 2018, Epic announced it was shutting down Paragon by April of that year, providing refunds to all players.[44] Similarly, Epic announced it had halted development of the planned free-to-play Unreal Tournament game, its team transitioned to Fortnite, though the game will remain available, playable, and open to end-user modifications.[45] Players on a Fortnite-dedicated Reddit forum had expressed concerns that a similar fate could befall the Save the World mode of Fortnite, as externally, the Save the World mode has not received the same attention in providing updates and improvements compared to the Battle Royale mode since that mode's release.[46]
Analysis firm SuperData estimated that Fortnite Battle Royale made over US$126 million in February 2018, surpassing Battlegrounds's revenues for the same period of US$103 million.[111] SuperData estimated Fortnite's revenues over all platforms to exceed US$223 million for the month of March.[112] By April 2018, SuperData estimated that Fortnite Battle Royale had surpassed both sales and player count on all platforms over Battlegrounds.[113] The game generated US$296 million in revenue in April, followed by US$318 million in May, according to SuperData.[114][115] By July 2018, Fortnite Battle Royale had been estimated to have brought in over US$1 billion in revenue.[116][3] Prior to the Season 5 start in July 2018, Sensor Tower estimated that the mobile version of Fortnite Battle Royale made over US$1.2 million daily; following the launch of Season 5, revenues jumped to US$2 million per day.[117] SuperData estimated that Fortnite Battle Royale brought in $2.4 billion in revenue during 2018, the highest annual revenue of any free-to-play title.[118]
Fortnite Battle Royale was made available to South Korea and their numerous PC bangs in November 2018; shortly after this point, Epic reported that Fortnite has surpassed a concurrent player count of 8.3 million, surpassing the game's previous record of 3.4 million in February 2018.[49]
The main gameplay for Fortnite Battle Royale follows the battle royale genre's standard format. The game normally is played either with each player on their own, or in a squad of two to four players, with up to 100 players participating each round. The round starts with players, weaponless, skydiving from floating buses ("Battle Bus") then deploying a glider onto a region of land. The island's fixed layout includes several landmarks and locations (named in an alliterative fashion, such as "Loot Lake", "Tilted Towers", and "Retail Row") that are mostly ghost towns, while a random distribution of weapons, shields, and other combat support features can be found by searching buildings and other sites. The goal is to be the last player or team alive by eliminating or avoiding other players. Over time, the game's safe zone (representing the eye of a storm), decreases in size, and players caught outside the zone will take damage. This directs the surviving players into tighter spaces, forcing player encounters. Supply drops will spawn in random locations during a match, providing random weapons and items. Like in the original Fortnite game, Fortnite Battle Royale is primarily played in a third-person perspective.
A number of celebrities and athletes have said they play Fortnite Battle Royale, such as Chance the Rapper, Joe Jonas, Finn Wolfhard, Roseanne Barr, and Norm Macdonald.[133] For athletes, their appreciation for the game has taken on the form of recreating the various emotes in game as part of their on-field celebration dances.[134] Such Fortnite celebrations were frequently throughout the 2018 FIFA World Cup event in June and July 2018,[135] including by Antoine Griezmann after a scoring penalty kick during the final.[136]
Fortnite Battle Royale is a free-to-play battle royale video game developed and published by Epic Games. It was released as an early access game for Microsoft Windows, macOS, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One in September 2017, and for iOS, Nintendo Switch, and Android in 2018. It is a spin-off from Epic's Fortnite: Save the World, a cooperative survival game with construction elements.
Fortnite Battle Royale has become a own phenomenon, compared by analysts to the success in drawing in players that are not average video game players as World of Warcraft and Minecraft had done previously.[102] Fortnite Battle Royale obtained over 10 million players two weeks after its release.[103] By March 2018, it was estimated to have more than 45 million players.[104] Three months later, in June 2018, Epic announced they had achieved over 125 million players in less than a year, with at least 40 million players playing the game once per month.[105] In November 2018, Bloomberg reported that Fortnite had over 200 million registered accounts across all platforms.[106]
Fortnite is an online video game developed by Epic Games and released in 2017. It is available in three distinct game mode versions that otherwise share the same general gameplay and game engine: Fortnite: Save the World, a cooperative shooter-survival game for up to four players to fight off zombie-like creatures and defend objects with fortifications they can build, Fortnite Battle Royale, a free-to-play battle royale game where up to 100 players fight to be the last person standing, and Fortnite Creative, where players are given complete freedom to create worlds and battle arenas. The first two game modes were released in 2017 as early access titles and Creative was released on December 6, 2018. Save the World is available only for Windows, macOS, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One, while Battle Royale has been released for those platforms in addition for Nintendo Switch, iOS and Android devices.
Journalists attributed Fortnite Battle Royale's success over PlayerUnknown Battlegrounds as a combination of several factors: besides being free-to-play and available on consoles, the game was released at a time when Battlegrounds was struggling with game cheaters and a toxic community, and that it features a less violent, cartoonish quality to it that, like Minecraft, was able to draw in a younger and mixed-gendered audiences to play.[122][123] Further, Epic has maintained frequent updates for the game, adding new weapons and in-game tools alongside limited-time events and longer-term narrative elements that help to further draw in players.[124] The high interest in the game within March 2018, which has been able to draw larger audiences compared to existing multiplayer games like Grand Theft Auto Online and Destiny 2, has had a financial impact on competing publishers Take-Two Interactive and Activision Blizzard, their stocks having fallen during this period, according to analysts from Morgan Stanley and KeyBanc Capital Markets Inc.[104][120] Activision's CEO Bobby Kotick, on their quarterly results released May 2018, stated that "Fortnite is definitely a lot of competition right now...it’s been a really important catalyst in attracting new gamers to gaming",[125] and the company is looking to develop its own battle royale title.[126] Electronic Arts CEO Blake Jorgensen also considered both Fortnite Battle Royale and Battlegrounds as having a significant market impact. Jorgensen said " [Fortnite is] bringing younger people into the marketplace and younger people into first-person shooters, and I think that's good for the long run health of that category for all of us in the industry".[127] Non-video game entertainment companies have also seen the impact of Fortnite. Netflix, in reporting its Q4 2018 results, stated that their competition is more with Fortnite, including streaming content related to the game, rather than rival television network stations like HBO.[128]
The idea for Fortnite Battle Royale arose following the release of the similar battle royale game PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds, which saw numerous player count records broken throughout 2017. Seeing its rapid growth and commercial success, Epic Games saw the opportunity to create a battle royale mode of their own. Originally released as part of the paid Fortnite game, Epic spun out a dedicated version of the game offered as free-to-play funded by microtransactions, sharing in-game currency with the main Fortnite game, allowing players to buy or earn cosmetic items to customize their character, as well as completing challenges through a battle pass to earn additional rewards. As of January2019, the game has seen over 200 million players, and has been estimated to have earned $2.4 billion in microtransactions. Fortnite Battle Royale has become a cultural phenomenon, with streams of the game achieving record-high viewerships, and with several high-profile celebrities stating their appreciation of the game.