<P> One such game was the Battle Royale mod for ARMA 2 / DayZ, developed by Brendan Greene, known by his online alias, "PlayerUnknown", and first released in 2013 . This mod was directly inspired by the 2000 Japanese film Battle Royale, which told the story of a number of students transported to an island and forced to battle each other to be the sole survivor, lending to the mod's name . In Greene's case, to differ his offering from Hunger Games - inspired mods, he designed the mod to randomly scatter weapons around the map instead of from a central repository . Greene updated this mode for ARMA 3 when the DayZ team opted to release their game as a standalone title . Greene continued to adopt his format as a consultant for H1Z1: King of the Kill before becoming the creative developer at Bluehole of a standalone game representing his vision of the battle royale genre, PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds . While Battlegrounds was not the first battle royale game, its release to early access in March 2017 drew a great deal of attention, selling over twenty million units by the end of the year, and is considered the defining game of the genre . In September 2017, the game broke the previous record for highest number of concurrent players, with 1,348,374 players on the game simultaneously . Battlegrounds' explosive growth and how it established the Battle royale genre was considered one of the top trends in the video game industry in 2017 . </P> <P> Prior and near Battlegrounds's release, games from other developers took inspiration from highly played battle royale - style mods, as well as the popularity of The Hunger Games film series, which first premiered in 2012 . Ark: Survival Evolved by Studio Wildcard introduced its "Survival of the Fittest" mode in July 2015, which was geared to be used for eSports tournaments . The mode was temporarily broken off as its own free - to - play game during 2016 before the developers opted to merge it back into the main game for ease of maintenance of the overall game . The Culling, by Xaviant Studios, was released in early access in 2016, and was designed to be a streaming - friendly battle royale mode for 16 players . However, following the release of Battlegrounds, The Culling lost much of its player base, and a few months after releasing the full version of the game, Xaviant announced they were ending further development on it to move onto other projects . Battlegrounds's popularity created a new interest in the battle royale genre . Numerous games that copied the fundamental gameplay of Battlegrounds appeared in China, shortly after Battlegrounds's release . </P> <P> Epic Games had released Fortnite, a cooperative survival game, into early access near the release of Battlegrounds . Epic saw the potential to create their own battle royale mode, and by September 2017, released the free - to - play Fortnite Battle Royale which incorporated some of the survival elements from the main Fortnite game . The game has seen similar player counts as Battlegrounds, with twenty million unique players reported by Epic Games by November 2017 . Bluehole expressed concern at this move, less due to being a clone of Battlegrounds, but more so that they had been working with Epic Games for technical support of the Unreal Engine in Battlegrounds, and thus they were worried that Fortnite may be able to include planned features to their battle royale mode before they could release those in Battlegrounds . PUBG Corp has sued Epic in South Korea claiming Fortnite Battle Royale infringements on Battlegrounds' copyrights . </P> <P> In 2018, Fortnite Battle Royale surpassed Battlegrounds in revenue, "largely thanks to its free - to - play model" and releasing as a cross-platform game, as well as its accessibility to casual players . Battlegrounds creator Brendan Greene credited it with growing the battle royale genre . Its mainstream publicity further increased following a stream by Tyler "Ninja" Blevins with Drake, which set a Twitch.tv record for concurrent viewership . It accumulated a total playerbase of 45 million in January and 3.4 million concurrent players in February . Polygon labeled it "the biggest game of 2018" and "a genuine cultural phenomenon", with "everyone from NFL players to famous actors" playing it, including Red Sox player Xander Bogaerts and Bayern Munich's youth team borrowing celebrations from the game . </P>

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