Some genres are okay with competition, but Battle Royales are not one of them. H1ZI’s team has been upfront that they feel cheated by PUBG’s success, and PUBG, not to be outdone, threatened a lawsuit against Fortnite. Unfortunately for both, there aren’t many rules in game creation, and while there might be bad blood, technically, no one has done anything illegal. It’s about making the best game and letting the fans decide, and unfortunately for PUBG and H1ZI, everything is going Fortnite’s way.

1. Glitches

Both H1ZI and PUBG have been plagued with glitches and technical issues almost from day one. H1ZI’s problems range from not being able to login to accounts to servers going offline from bugs to technical issues like framerate drops. PUBG has had similar issues for most of its existence, but its launch on Xbox was particularly awful with insane framerate drops, textures not rendering at all, and combat nearly unplayable. There was no excuse for PUBG – after so much success and time – to not be better optimized.

By comparison, Fortnite has had relatively few technical issues. It also managed to release its Battle Royale mode just two months after its original title, releasing across all platforms. PUBG took longer to release on Xbox despite being on market far before Fortnite and still released with piles of bugs. That doesn’t exactly create confidence in the team.

2. Cheaters

There are cheaters in every game, but when 10% of your entire userbase is cheating, you have a problem. That is what has been happening to PUBG. They have recently banned over 2 million cheaters, with nearly half of those bans coming in January of 2018. That means there is a near guarantee that every single game will have a cheater in it, and according to many players and streamers, that was exactly the case.

H1Z1 has done a far better job with handling cheaters, but it is still driving players in droves from PUBG.

3. The Building Mechanic

The fact is, professional Battle Royale matches have left a lot to be desired. Matches often devolved into campers hiding and other players roaming to find them. Fortnite’s building mechanic solved much of this. By allowing players to build protection, it vastly increases their options for roaming and still having shelter and cover. In fact, a player’s ability to build rapidly and intelligently has become the difference between expert players and newbies. It also helps that coupled with the building mechanic is the ability to destroy environments completely, meaning there are numerous ways to approach a potential camper. For pro play, there are also vastly higher degrees of skill caps when a building/farming element is thrown into the mix. It’s a whole new set of skills to master.

4. Artstyle/aesthetic

Despite many people disliking the ‘cartoony’ artstyle, Fortnite’s style sets it apart from the other Battle Royale’s, which actually makes it more marketable. H1ZI and PUBG don’t look that different from one another, but Fortnite has a style more like Overwatch or traditional games. This not only makes it stand out, but the cartoony style makes more sense for things like launch pads, disco balls, and goofy spacesuit outfits. It’s also fairly well-known that Valve originally designed Team Fortress 2 in a ‘cartoony’ way because the graphics hold up better overtime, something Blizzard also took to heart when making Overwatch. H1ZI isn’t even three years old, but it already has started to look stale.

Conversely, if Fortnite ever looks to enter esports, its artstyle is actually one that will carry it for many years into the future without showing many signs of graphical aging.

5. Item variety

Part of the reason that loot boxes and the like became so popular was because of the thrill of seeing what they contained. In this regard, Fortnite is simply more exciting because their chests have a wider variety of items that are far more game-like. Items glow orange, green, or purple, and the loot can be bandages for health, potions for shields, building materials, guns, ammo, and traps. The weapons glow also determines the strength of it, with grey being the weakest and gold being the rarest (mythic). Whether it’s watching a streamer find a legendary or finding it yourself, the scaling of items adds something to the excitement factor that the other games simply don’t have, and the larger variety means that chests are always exciting.

6. Fortnite: Battle Royale is free

Some of the other points are arguable, but this one isn’t. Fortnite is free. H1ZI and PUBG are not. It’s hard to argue spending $20 versus spending $0 when the $0 game has fewer bugs, fewer cheaters, and better support.

That said, it’s possible for PUBG and H1ZI to turn things around, but looking at how long it took them to get out of beta and how quickly their declining (H1Z1 has seen an 80% dip in their player base while PUBG has seen a 10% decrease), it seems pretty unlikely. Instead, we’re predicting Fortnite: Battle Royale will be the last one standing.