In Fortnite, the now-popular Battle Royale mode was developed in just 2 months – and most of the work was done by the developers of another game. We don’t hear much about Unreal Tournament anymore.
At the developer conference GDC, there was interesting information about the current hit “Fortnite Battle Royale.”
The development time was incredibly short:
- For Fortnite, the PvE mode “Save the World” launched on July 21.
- Epic started working on the Battle Royale mode as soon as the PVE mode was out, around July 25.
- And the Battle Royale mode was released on September 26.
So it was only 2 months in which the mode was in development that is now the biggest game in the world.
Unreal Tournament Team Saves the Day
The main work was likely done by the team of “Unreal Tournament.” They are said to have stepped in and driven the project forward.
It is said that the first-person shooter experts from Unreal Tournament did most of the work on the new mode.
Originally Intended as Buy2Play
Initially, they wanted to make Battle Royale a “PvP mode” within “Save the World.” This would have meant that “Fortnite Battle Royale” would also be behind a $40 payment barrier. But in the last 2 weeks of the project, they decided otherwise. They uncoupled the mode and made it Free2Play.
At Fortnite, they are quite proud of what they have achieved. Epic’s Ed Zibrist says: “I doubt any other publisher could have pulled off the stunt we did.”
This was only possible for Fortnite because the game had been in development since 2011, and Epic, as the creator of the Unreal Engine, was capable of making such a pivot.
Development Stalls at Unreal Tournament
What is a huge deal for Epic as a company does not evoke such great feelings among Unreal Tournament fans. They felt abandoned by their developers and asked on reddit: “Will the developers come back at some point, now that Fortnite Battle Royale is out?”
In the reddit thread, it says that about three months prior, the Epic folks had left the community’s Discord channels without a word and had left without saying goodbye.
Today, we know what they did during that time. Fans of Paragon can sing a song about that too.
More on the topic:
Fortnite is “coming to mobile” – Why is all of this happening so quickly?
