Recent years have seen a trend away from the classics of first-person shooters and toward the relatively new battle royale genre. The battle royale games all follow the same style; massive amounts of players spawn in a set world usually through parachutes and find weapons and other aids to help them become the last person or team standing.

One of the most well-known battle royale titles is “PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds” (“PUBG”), which was released in early access for Windows in March and is intended to be released for console after a full release to Windows. The more recent game, “Fortnite,” was released for early access for Windows, macOS, Playstation 4 and Xbox One in the middle of July.

Developers of “PUBG” have been recently criticizing “Fortnite” for essentially stealing ideas and providing extreme competition; “Fortnite” obtained 10 million players within two weeks of its release. However, there are many reasons why “Fortnite” is becoming more popular than “PUBG.”

Obvious reasons for “Fortnite’s” popularity includes that “Fortnite” is free and multiplatform, with plans for cross-platform play. This already makes “Fortnite” more available to a larger player-base, since “PUBG” is only released to Windows as of now and costs 30 bucks.

Another clear reason is that “Fortnite” requires less intensive graphic requirements compared to “PUBG,” which allows players with under-par setups to still play Fortnite. This is due to the fact that “PUBG” aims to be more realistic, while “Fortnite” has a more cartoonish style.

“Fortnite” also introduces new concepts to the battle royale style, as it allows for constructing of walls, ramps and platforms with materials that the players obtain during the game. This heavily impacts the gameplay and players usually need to build their own “bases” to get a shot at winning the game. This differs from “PUBG,” which has limited environmental interaction as it aims to be realistic.

The downside of “Fortnite” being free is the increase of hackers, as hackers can just create new accounts if they get banned. Also, the increase of players places a huge strain on servers, as can be seen recently during the weekends.

Both “PUBG” and “Fortnite” feature in-game purchases, but these purchases are purely cosmetic and don’t affect gameplay skill-wise.

In terms of development, “PUBG” is nearing its max potential, which “Fortnite” is clearly capable of surpassing. However, both of these games are extremely good, and ultimately it comes down to player preference.