Fortnite's Battle Royale mode becomes a two-month pivot heard worldwide
Epic Games builds a free PUBG-style mode and it swallows the rest of the game
Quick facts
- Developer
- Epic Games
- Battle Royale launch
- 26 September 2017
- Development time
- About two months
- Price
- Free-to-play
What happened
Epic Games released the co-op survival game Fortnite: Save the World into paid early access on 25 July 2017. According to Epic's Ed Zobrist, speaking at a Game Developers Conference panel, work on a competing mode inspired by the standalone hit PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds began around the same time and took about two months, an unusually fast pivot Zobrist said he doubted any major publisher could have managed. Epic had initially planned to place the new hundred-player, last-man-standing mode behind Save the World's 40-dollar paywall, but decided in its final two weeks of development to release it as a separate, completely free title instead. Fortnite Battle Royale launched on 26 September 2017 across PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One simultaneously, unlike PUBG, which was still console-exclusive-in-waiting at the time.
Why it matters
The free, cross-platform launch let Fortnite overtake PUBG on consoles within months and helped popularize the battle royale genre and the free-to-play, cosmetics-funded business model across the wider industry, a shift that shaped how major publishers designed and monetized online multiplayer games for years afterward.
How we know
PC Gamer reported Ed Zobrist's account of the two-month development timeline directly from his GDC panel remarks; GamesRadar+'s contemporaneous coverage from the week of launch independently corroborates the free-to-play pricing decision and the simultaneous PC and console release.
Sources
- PC Gamer. Fortnite Battle Royale was developed in just two months, wasn't originally free-to-play · Reputable sourcepcgamer.com · The domain "pcgamer.com" is on our Reputable source registry.
- GamesRadar+. Fortnite Battle Royale, basically PUBG with building, comes to PC and consoles free on Sept. 26 · Reputable sourcegamesradar.com · The domain "gamesradar.com" is on our Reputable source registry.
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