There was a bit of controversy when Epic Games announced that its hit game Fortnite would be getting a 100-player Battle Royale mode, with PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds developer Bluehole insisting that the publisher had gone too far with copying the formula. But that didn’t stop Epic from releasing the mode for free in the game anyway – and it’s a gamble that’s paid off tremendously.
The company sent out a tweet this morning proclaiming that Battle Royale has already become an imminent success with over one million players in the first 24 hours alone. “Over 1 million players have partied on the Battle Bus during the first day of Battle Royale,” it noted. “Thank you and party on!”
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Considering that the mode was added free of charge in a game that was already free-to-play, it’s no surprise that it’s such a hit. That said, it’s still got a ways to go to catch up with Battlegrounds, which is still a stunning success in its own right with 1.5 million concurrent players reached just this week – a huge record for a game that’s still in Early Access.
That said, it looks like Epic Games will continue to push Battle Royale like crazy, making it one of the more prominent features in the game, alongside Squads and the general gameplay that people have gotten into with Fortnite over the past few weeks. And that’ll do well for when the game is fully ready to go sometime in 2018, when its full free-to-play model should be finally set. For now, you can totally join the party by either purchasing the game physically or digitally, as you can jump in and totally enjoy all the content it currently has to offer.
As far as Bluehole goes, it hasn’t stated what its “further action” against Epic Games will be just yet regarding its Battle Royale mode, but considering Battlegrounds actually runs on Epic’s Unreal Engine technology, that threat is likely to fizzle out fast. We’ll see what happens over the next few weeks in terms of what it does next.
In the meantime, Fortnite is available now for Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and PC.
