There’s no mistaking PlayerUnknown’s Battleground’s role in bringing the battle royale genre into the limelight - spawning dozens of copycat titles and original takes on the game mode alike. But recently, another battle royale title has risen to wider popularity (on Twitch, at least): Epic Games’ Fortnite.
The free-to-play title passed PUBG as the most watched game on Twitch somewhere between the tail end of February and the start of March according to statistics gathered by sullygnome.
Looking at a closer analysis of the most watched games on Twitch within the past 30 days, Fortnite boasts some impressive numbers, more than doubling PUBG’s counts for people streaming the game, along with the average amount of viewers watching. In fact - PUBG and Fortnite aren’t even next to each other on the charts, with Fortnite occupying the #1 spot and PUBG falling to #3, right beneath League of Legends.
It isn’t too hard to understand Fortnite’s rising popularity within the gaming community. The game is viewed as a much more accessible, well-optimized, approachable alternative to PUBG, all while being free-to-play to boot. The game has even enjoyed some celebrity attention lately - with popular rapper Drake teaming up with pro gamer and streamer Tyler “Ninja” Blevins in what is now the most viewed Twitch stream ever.
Many gamers wouldn’t be out of line in forgetting that Fortnite wasn’t even meant to be a battle royale title in the first place - starting its early access development as a fort-building and survival game. However, its meteoric success in the genre continues to propel its numbers past the bar set by PUBG.
