Epic MegaGames has been in development on a game called Fornite for a long time, but just released it for free with a surprise PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds + crafting game mode called Fortnite: Battle Royale. This wouldn’t be a big deal, except for the fact that Epic is the licensor to Bluehole for the engine behind PUBG. So the licensor is undercutting their licensee with a free game that is very similar, and they didn’t even speak with Bluehole before announcing and releasing it.
Christopher Livingston at Windows Gamer interviewed Bluehole’s Changhan Kim:
Changhan Kim: There are a lot of different issues but everyone else that released a battle royale game mode made their own thing, but it was Epic Games that made this game that is similar to us that has similar elements, and that’s the concern, that it was Epic Games.
We use Unreal Engine to develop PUBG, and we pay a large amount of royalties based on the size of our success to Epic Games, and Epic Games always promoted their licensing models [saying] “We want to support the success indie developers”, and [Bluehole is] this indie developer that has been the most successful one using the Unreal Engine this year, and that’s the problem that I see.
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