Fortnite and PUBG Can Co-Exist Says Epic Games’ Tim Sweeney

While PUBG Corp is preparing to litigate against Epic Games and Fortnite for what it alleges is Epic stealing their IP and idea, Epic believes that the success of one battle royale game does not preclude the success of the other- and that PUBG, Fortnite, and indeed, many more similar games can all co-exist on the market.

“You buy one brand of vacuum cleaner, you’re not going to buy another one, because you only need one,” Sweeney explained to MCV. “But with games, if they’re two great games, people will play both.

“I don’t feel like products in the same genre are cut-throat competitors at all, I think they’re very complimentary and the work that we’ve done on Fortnite has benefitted PUBG and a huge array of other games,” he continued. “Namely the optimization that got us to 60fps on all console platforms, making the game work on mobile, all the streaming improvements and everything else required to support a game of this scale, it’s benefiting everyone.”

So, two things- I think Sweeney is obviously right here. In spite of what many gamers like to believe, the gaming market is not zero sum. Battlefield and Call of Duty can co-exist. The Elder Scrolls and The Witcher can co-exist. PS4 and Nintendo Switch can co-exist. Horizon and Zelda can co-exist. And similarly, Fortnite and PUBG can and do co-exist- in fact, while Fortnite is Fortnite, PUBG still frequently gets over 2 million concurrent players on Steam. That’s still a historically successful game. Fornite‘s success hasn’t changed that.