Fortnite's Free PUBG-Like Battle Royale Mode Had 1 Million Players On Launch Day

Fortnite's standalone Battle Royale mode launched yesterday for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC, and despite objections from PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds developer Bluehole, it's already off to an impressive start. Today, Epic revealed that more than one million players played the title on launch day.

Like PUBG, Battle Royale is a 100-player survival game set on a single map that closes in as the game progresses. Players are dropped onto the map via a "battle bus" and are armed with only a glider and pickaxe, with the objective being to outlast all the other players and be the last one standing. It's this similarity--and Epic's admission that PUBG inspired it--that caused PUBG developer Bluehole to speak out against the game last week.

"We've had an ongoing relationship with Epic Games throughout PUBG's development as they are the creators of UE4, the engine we licensed for the game," Bluehole VP and executive producer Chang Han Kim said. "After listening to the growing feedback from our community and reviewing the gameplay for ourselves, we are concerned that Fortnite may be replicating the experience for which PUBG is known." Han Kim also said that Bluehole was considering taking some kind of "action" against Epic.

Fortnite's Battle Royale mode released alongside the game's 1.6.3 update. Along with a number of bug fixes, the patch introduced new Battle Royale match types (Duos and Squad), three new weapons, and supply drops. Epic will also release Fortnite's Save the World PvE campaign as a free-to-play game sometime next year.