Speaking at a Game Developer Conference panel, Epic Games Head of Publishing, Ed Zobrist, revealed a number of interesting facts regarding the development of Battle Royale for Fortnite. After starting work on it as Save the World launched in July, it only took the developers a total of two months to bring the mode to live and put it in the hands of players. Considering the player versus player nature of the mode, the Fortnite team enlisted the help of the arena shooter experts on the Unreal Tournament team to do the heavy lifting.
Interestingly enough, Epic originally intended to place this PvP Battle Royale mode inside of the traditional, PvE mode called Save the World. While the mode is eventually going to be free to play, it’s currently in Early Access so players need to pay to unlock it. Ultimately, this would have also locked Battle Royale behind a $40 paywall, which no doubt would have had a dramatic impact on its current popularity. About two weeks before its September 26 launch, Epic changed course and decided to make the mode stand alone and release it as free to play.
Fortnite’s popularity and mainstream attention continue to accelerate. Recently, Not only are sports teams and players mentioning the game or performing celebrations based on character actions, but certain Twitch streamers like Ninja have gotten a lot of attention lately. Last week, Ninja broke the record for concurrent viewers of a solo streamer when he teamed up with a number of celebrities and athletes like Drake, Travis Scott, and Juju Smith Schuster during a Fortnite Battle Royale session.
Fortnite is available now on PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One.
Source: GDC 18
