Well let me tell you one thing, 1.3 million daily active users (avg.) is far from dead. This number is descending but still holds very strong.

On the other hand what’s obvious about this situation is that many have shifted away from the laggy and buggy experience offered by the realistic Battle Royale sim. Many are now heading for new horizons, hoping the grass is greener on that side, alas myself included.

Fed up with the chicken dinners

The thing about PUBG is that at a certain time in the past, it was a gentle breath of fresh air. A realistic and serious alternative to H1Z1 King of The Hill.

From the “dropping out of the sky to land wherever you want” mechanism, the attachments gameplay (a silencer can make or break your endgame), the fall damage off running vehicles — everything in PUBG makes it for a heavier and more involving experience.

The arsenal variety and settings for each gun, the different recoil patterns, the beautiful huge maps and strategic terrain modeled for sniping guerilla..it does feel like PUBG should be the clear winner over any other Battle Royale game out there.

However all of this is extremely generic, other games before H1Z1 tried to bring the realism out of this type of game, and clearly failed in a way or another — not necessarily because the games were too unrealistic.

Hey what’s that thing. It’s coming at full force towards us…

The grandfather, the father and the child. Two of them are growing tired and balding, one is full of life.

Remember how League of Legends grew to become the huge beast that amassed 100M+ active monthly users (data from 2017)?

Back when RIOT games was a small time studio who decided to dream big nobody would believe it would become the behemoth it is today.

Similarly Epic Games the game studio behind Fortnite, has pulled the same stunt. And that’s a scary similar story to League’s — they’re just doing it under the sun and no one seems to see it. Fortnite is to PUBG, what League is to the original DoTA and DoTA2.

Similar decisions, great vision, huge differences.

Esports

In an interview, Brandon Green of PUBG has announced that if 2017 was the year where PUBG would come out of Beta and into v1.0, 2018 would be the year where they would work out their issues, polish up the game and make it an esport-compatible game. “Esports ready” as many of us like to mock it.

Fortnite and PUBG are also running on the same game engine (the Unreal Engine), believe it or not. This led to various controversies, when Fortnite started accelerating and gaining traction (in terms of daily active users) near the start of their journey.

Unlike PUBG, Fornite doesn’t have aspirations of being esports ready.

Sure there might be some plans in the future, but the company behind the game is way too busy pocketing money from all the skins, in-game microtransactions that have defined many other games before them, especially in the asian region and in League of Legends.

From Wikipedia

League of Legends is funded through microtransactions using Riot Points (RP), an in-game currency which can be purchased by players in the client store. RP can be used to purchase champions, champion skins, ward skins, summoner icons, emotes, and certain multi-game boosts. An additional currency, Blue Essence (BE) (known as Influence Points from 2009–2017), is earned by playing the game and leveling up. League of Legends is free-to-play and all in-game purchases with a material effect on game-play may be acquired by either RP or BE; only cosmetic items are locked to RP-only.

Microtransactions

Cosmetic items in exchange for real money? I can see how that worked in the past and how it’s working again.

It’s obvious that players want to stand out when they play with their friends, whether they want to boast having spent money on an exclusive outfit (or skin) or they thoroughly enjoy the feeling of wearing nicer clothes on their character — the cosmetic micro-transactions business is booming.

Yes PUBG has cosmetic items available too, these are dropped in randomly generated loot boxes and they’re extremely boring, repetitive and hard to get. You can trade loot-boxes on the marketplace but that’s not fun as CS:GO. Something here went horribly wrong. I think it’s mostly the un-fun.

And to all you PUBG banana-outfit wearing people…yes I’m looking at you, from the bottom of this loot-ocean where I am standing. Please do know that I will be taking a shot at you first, as a pay-back.

A typical Banana Suit Player

Casual game?

Finally, Fortnite is a 3-rd person game, where casual gamers can enjoy a 2, 10, 30 minute game without strings attached. The size of the map compared to PUBG is tiny.

Accessibility to weapons and other in-game items, is huge in Fortnite. Items are shiny and very well highlighted in the environment.

Their spawn rate is very high meaning you are guaranteed to be able to fight someone approx. 5 seconds from the moment you land — given that you land near a building.

The mining and building mechanics, similar to Minecraft is probably one of the reasons everyone who owns a console or a PC has tried at one point the game.

Oh and the game feels casual but is also FREE to play of course. Just like League of Legends in its early days — this colorful, FREE to play world seems to work wonders against the dark planet, where H1Z1, PUBG and their cousins seem to stay unrest.

Netcode, Performance, Frustration

Finally, the most obvious reason why Fortnite has de-throned PUBG is the ability to run of pretty much any kind of computer.

Whether your computer is 5 years old or 3 or you bought it yesterday Fortnite will run decently and fluidly. That’s literally the opposite of PUBG, where you need a good computer to play.

Epic Games did a great job with the netcode and server calculations clearly building upon years of experience with the Unreal Engine and their server engineering. Smooth gameplay, rarely you can perceive lag and you’re not being hit by ghost bullets behind a wall.

PUBG on the other hand suffers from all the frustrating issues, performance on the client (your machine) and the server. Rubberbanding, lag, FPS-drops in random locations, FPS-drops during explosions or usage of certain items and the famous ghost-bullets that seem to hit you even when you’re camped up behind the largest wall you’ve ever seen.

Is PUBG dead? No. Is it going to die? Nope.

Games are made to be fun and entertaining, sure they can also be competitive and heart-racing but you can’t have that if you can’t get the fun-part locked down first.

When I first installed Fortnite, I didn’t like it. To me it seemed there was no skill involved in this game, anyone can shoot you down with a shotgun. That is, unless they’re fooling around or playing without a mouse, they will be able to inflict some damage on you.

I then checked on Twitch for some stream to see what the fuss was all about and after spending a few hours here and there, it is clear that you can get into this game and get really good at it. Not so much because of the shooting mechanic but more-so due to the fact that building defenses around your character is crucial for survival. And so is outsmarting your enemies with tactical ramps.

I don’t think PUBG is going away soon, especially because the team behind it (BlueHole) is working hard on fixing their most crucial issues. They have the capital to make it work out. Surely, after selling $700M worth of games last year.

They clearly want to iron out the crests that made so many people move away from PUBG and work on the esport side of the game more.

However the crushing hand that Fortnite seems to have on the game is impressive: Their casual approach and fun elements borrowed from many other games has personally got me playing too!