Free-to-play Fortnite: Battle Royale saw 7M players its first week

Epic Games says that its PUBG-like Fortnite: Battle Royale has passed 7 million players at the close of its first week out in the world. The company’s free-to-play take on the battle royale genre officially launched on September 26 and saw over 1 million players across PC, Xbox One, and PlayStation 4 on that first day.

Fortnite looks to be the first high-profile game to take on and release its own entry in the battle royale genre, but Epic Games notably caught flack a few weeks back from Playerunknown’s Battlegrounds developer Bluehole after it cited Battlegrounds as one of the major inspirations for the mode.

Though not the first game to pitch the idea of a battle royale mode, Playerunknown’s Battlegrounds was inarguably the game to first popularize the genre. Battlegrounds kicked off its early access run in March and crossed the '1 million sales' milestone just over two weeks later.

Though Battlegrounds has now sold well over 10 million copies by this point, Epic’s free-to-play variant is seeing better week one numbers than Bluehole’s title and, if that momentum keeps up, that could mean good things for the newly christened battle royale genre as a whole. 

However, it is worth mentioning that Fortnite: Battle Royale has a few notable differences from Playerunknown’s Battlegrounds that likely helped it outpace the original game’s early numbers. For one, Fortnite’s take on the genre launched simultaneously on PC, Xbox One, and PlayStation 4 while Battlegrounds is currently only on PC with timed exclusivity on Xbox One in its near future. Additionally, Epic is giving the battle royale mode away for free to newcomers and existing Fortnite owners alike while Battlegrounds is priced at roughly $30 on Steam.