By the end of the decade, the genre became a cultural phenomenon, with standalone games such as PUBG: Battlegrounds (2017), Fortnite Battle Royale (2017), Apex Legends (2019) and Call of Duty: Warzone (2020) each having received tens of millions of players within months of their releases.
The random nature of starting point, item placement, and safe area reduction enables the battle royale genre to challenge players to think and react quickly and improve strategies throughout the match as to be the last man/team standing.
[4][5] The 2000 Japanese film Battle Royale, along with Koushun Takami's earlier 1999 novel of the same name and its 2000 manga adaptation, set out the basic rules of the genre, including players being forced to kill each other until there is a single survivor, taking place on a shrinking map, and the need to scavenge for weapons and items.
[6] It soon inspired a wave of battle royale themed Japanese manga and anime, such as Gantz (2000), Future Diary (2006), and Btooom!
[10][11] Survival Games takes inspiration from the film, initially placing players at the center of the map near a set of equipment chests.
When the game commences, players can compete over the central resources or spread out to find items stored in chests scattered around the play area.
[12] In DayZ, a mod for Arma 2, released in August 2012, players struggle alongside or against each other to obtain basic necessities to continue living in a persistent sandbox filled with various dangers.
[13] This led to the development of game mods that sacrificed DayZ open-endedness in favor of focusing on more frequent hostile interactions between players to determine an eventual winner.
This mod was directly inspired by Battle Royale,[14] and introduces concepts from the film such as a shrinking play zone that forces players into closer proximity as the game goes on.
Greene continued to use his format as a consultant for H1Z1: King of the Kill[citation needed] before becoming the creative developer at Bluehole of a standalone game representing his vision of the battle royale genre, which would later be released as PUBG: Battlegrounds.
Both games drew tens of millions of players in short periods of time, proving them as commercial successes and leading to future growth after 2018.
H1Z1: King of the Kill, which predated these two titles in the genre, had become a fixture in the top most played games on Steam by the start of 2017, but was not able to maintain its playerbase.
[27] 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.
[35][36] Market observers predicted that there would be little likelihood of Bluehole winning the case, as it would be difficult to establish the originality of PUBG in court due to itself being derived from Battle Royale.
[41] Its mainstream publicity further increased following a stream by Tyler "Ninja" Blevins with Drake, JuJu Smith-Schuster and Travis Scott.
Major publishers,[53] including Electronic Arts[54] Activision,[55] and Ubisoft[56] acknowledged the impact of the growing genre on their future plans and on the industry as a whole.
Activision's Call of Duty series features a battle royale mode titled Blackout in its 2018 installment, Call of Duty: Black Ops 4,[57] as does EA's Battlefield V.[58] Other established games added battle royale-inspired game modes in updates, such as Grand Theft Auto Online,[59] Paladins,[60] Dota 2,[61] Battlerite,[62] and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive.
[72] As of December 2019[update] dozens of battle royale games have debuted but, similar to the MOBA genre, only two or three titles have maintained mainstream popularity at the same time.
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.
[84] Other factors including specific games' business models, such as Fortnite Battle Royale being free and available across computers, consoles, and mobile devices.
[86] SuperData Research reported that, in 2018, the three top-grossing battle royale games (Fortnite, PUBG and Call of Duty: Black Ops 4) generated nearly $4 billion in combined digital revenue that year.
[87] SuperData Research reported that the top four highest-grossing battle royale games of 2020 (PUBG Mobile, Garena Free Fire, Call of Duty: Warzone and Fortnite) generated more than $7 billion worldwide in combined digital revenue that year.