It was always planned for Fortnite to be free-to-play once the game game finished its stay in Early Access, but now a big chunk of the game is going free far earlier than the planned 2018 release. The recently-added Battle Royale mode will be available to everyone starting next week, whether or not you’ve purchased the game.
To be clear, this isn’t a free weekend or temporary promotion. Battle Royale will be free for good. There won’t be any microtransactions up front, but cosmetic purchases will eventually make their way in. Epic promise there’ll be nothing that confers a gameplay advantage, however.
The same update will also see the addition of squads to the Battle Royale mode.
Fortnite’s free-for-all will be free for all on September 26. If you bought the game specifically to get in on the Battle Royale mode between September 12 and 19, you can talk to Epic and get yourself a refund.
You know Fortnite as a co-op wave defence game with a focus on building fortifications. But this isn’t the Fortnite you know: developers Epic Games have announced a PvP Battle Royale mode.
It was inevitable, after the extraordinary success of PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds, that other games would get in on the act. Fortnite’s mode has plenty in common with PUBG: 100 players are pitted against one another on one giant map, into which they’ll be dropped via a flying Battle Bus (rather than a cargo plane).
You start with a pickaxe with which to break Fortnite’s destructible environments, but all other weapons and tools will need to be looted. New wrinkles are added to the PUBG formula through Fortnite’s building systems: rig traps to kill enemies hoping to loot your hideout, or hole up in fortified bases.
From the announce trailer, it looks like the new mode shares PUBG’s ever-shrinking circle of death, which you’d think would discourage players from fortifying one place too much. But the good news is we can see how it all ties together right now: Fortnite Battle Royale is in public testing now, and should be available for you to try through the game menu. It’s due for a full launch on September 26. Here’s the announcement from Epic.
