Kaylee Fagan
Brenden "PLAYER UNKNOWN" Greene gives a talk about his journey as a video game developer at the Game DEvelopment Conference in San Francisco on Friday, March 23.
- Brendan "PlayerUnknown" Greene, the original developer of "PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds," says that he doesn't see the game as competitive with "Fortnite: Battle Royale."
- "Fornite: Battle Royale" came out several months after "PUBG," and has a very similar concept and gameplay.
- Greene did not provide an update on when "PUBG" will be available for Sony PlayStation 4.
Last year, "PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds" became a surprise phenomenon, selling $400 million worth of copies in a few short months. But then, last September, "Fortnite" came out with its own, similar, free-to-play "Battle Royale" mode - and became a smash hit in its own right, challenging the dominance of "PUBG."
But at a talk at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco this week, Brendan "PlayerUnknown" Greene, the game's original creator, says he's more flattered by the success of "Fortnite: Battle Royale" than anything.
"I've tried to combat the perception that we're competitive with other 'Battle Royale' games," said Greene. "Its great that the space is expanding. We're happy that more and more people are getting to play games," he continued.
After the session, Greene reinforced the notion in an interview Business Insider after his presentation, saying, "I don't see us as competing. We are focusing on our game, not anyone else's."
It's a slight change of tune from September 2017, when "PUBG" developer Bluehole said that was "concerned" about the similarites between the game and the then-new "Fortnite: Battle Royale." At the time, "Fortnite" developer Epic Games acknowledged that "PUBG" was a direct inspiration for the new game mode, but it wasn't enough to fend off critisism from fans of Greene's game.
The "battle royale" game style first popularized by Greene's PUBG, drops a hundred players onto an island where they must fight to stay alive, until there's one player left standing, similar to "The Hunger Games."
So-called "Battle Royale" games have been exploding with popularity in the last year. "PUBG" was the most-played PC game on Steam last year, while "Fortnite: Battle Royale" recently set a Twitch viewership record with as many as 600,000 people tuning in at once to watch musician Drake play with streaming superstar Ninja.
"PUBG" is available for PC and Xbox One, and also just launched for Apple iOS this month. While Greene has said that the game will eventually come to Sony PlayStation 4, he declined to give Business Insider an update on when it will be available.
For its part, "Fortnite: Battle Royale" is available for PC, Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and it's currently in a closed testing period for iOS.