Creator of PubG Speaks Out. Says Games Need to Have “Better Protection” from Copycats

Brendan Greene, creator of PlayerUnkown’s Battlegrounds aka PubG, is upset at the recent trend of what he calls copycats of his game. PubG is a multiplayer online battle royale game developed and published by PUBG Corporation, a subsidiary of Korean publisher Bluehole. The game is loosely based and inspired by the year 2000 film Battle Royale. In the game, up to one hundred players parachute onto an island and scavenge for weapons and equipment to kill others while avoiding getting killed themselves. The available safe area of the game’s map decreases in size over time, directing surviving players into tighter areas to force encounters. The last player or team standing wins the round.

PubG rocketed quickly to popularity, even though it was as early access game. It made $11 million in the first three days of its early access release. By the second week of April 2017, the game had sold over one million copies with a peak player count of 89,000.  By May, it was over two million and revenues exceeding $60 million. Within three months, it has surpassed four million units sold and had over $100 million in sales. For perspective, it took Minecraft over a year to reach four million users. It didn’t stop there however. Eight months after release, they were sitting on over 20 million sales.

With that amount of popularity and money rolling in, the industry quickly started to take notice. In an effort to cash in on the genre, Greene claims other titles are ripping off parts of his game. In a recent interview, Greene says:

“I want this genre of games to grow.”

“For that to happen you need new and interesting spins on the game mode.”

“If it’s just copycats down the line, then the genre doesn’t grow and people get bored.”

China already has several titles with the same premise and gameplay. Some don’t even bother changing the graphics or styles and are hard to even tell apart from the original. Others games have put a special license on their games, such as a Terminator 2 theme to look different. Probably the most popular look-alike, Fortnite made by Epic Games, has also taken off in popularity. It started off as a co-op survival themed game in which players build defenses and ward off zombies. The Epic team loved Battle Royale games like PubG, and explored how they could make a similar mode within Fortnite‘s engine. This release, which beat PubG to consoles, caused some concern with developer Bluehole, as they had been working closely with Epic for Unreal engine support in PubG.  They were worried that Fortnite may be able to include planned features to their Battle Royale mode before they could release those in PubG. In September, Bluehole said that they were “contemplating action” over the similarities between the two games.

Greene is upset that games, unlike the music and film industry, do not have protection against copycat.  He says:

“There’s no intellectual property protection in games.”

“In movies and music there is IP protection and you can really look after your work. In gaming that doesn’t exist yet, and it’s something that should be looked into.”

“Some amazing games pass under the radar.”

“Then someone else takes the idea, has a marketing budget, and suddenly has a popular game because they ripped off someone else’s idea. I think it’s something the industry needs to look into.”

“You’re protecting the work of artists basically. Games are art for a large part, and so I think it’s important they’re protected.”

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