When Fortnite came out with its own battle royale game mode last year, gamers looked to the genre’s original standalone title, PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds, for some kind of retaliation. Given the concept and UI layouts were more than a little similar, it was thought PUBG Corp. might throw some legal weight around.
While the company spoke about the possibility of legal action, nothing really came of it, but now, PUBG Corp. has filed a lawsuit against the creators of Fortnite, Epic Games, for copyright infringement in Korea.
According to Korea Times, the lawsuit was actually filed in January in the Seoul Central District Court, listing Epic Games Korea as the defendant. While there doesn’t appear to be any filings in the US, the outcome will likely impact both companies globally.
When the issues were first raised back in September 2017, PUBG Corp. said it was “concerned that Fortnite may be replicating the experience for which PUBG is known”. At that point, PUBG was the most popular battle royale game, but Fortnite has since overtaken it, becoming an absolutely enormous cultural phenomenon.
PUBG creator, Brendan Greene, told The Verge in March that he was stoked on what Fortnite would do for the genre. “It’s great that the battle royale space is expanding and Fortnite is getting battle royale game mode in the hands of a lot more people,” he said.
How this whole thing pans out will have huge implications, not only for PUBG and Fortnite, but for the battle royale genre as a whole.
