Video games used to be made to be the next big thing to revolutionise the industry, but in recent years most big publishers are chasing trends instead of making them.  One of the biggest trends that is still going on is battle royale. Numerous big publishers have added battle royale into their games or created battle royale games to try to cash in on the new fad.  A few of the big name titles in the battle royale genre are Pubg, Apex Legends , Black ops 4, and Fortnite. These games borrow heavily from each other by taking what the other games do well and adding it into their own game.  The clearest example of this is the battle pass. A battle pass is a season based leveling system that in which players can unlock battle pass exclusive rewards as they level up, such as emotes, skins, banners and premium currency.  The battle pass has two tiers the free version and the premium version. The premium version can usually be unlocked using the games paid currency. Due to the success of Fortnite’s battle pass many of the other battle royales started to incorporate the paid pass into their games even if the games were not free to play.  

Aside from the similar monetization strategies, the games themselves take heavy inspiration from each other.  Take for instance Apex Legends respawn system, it is one of the best things about the game that make it stand out from the rest, but there have been leaks from data miners that Fortnite will be adding a respawn bus to the game to try to compete better with Apex.  Fortnite also added Apex Legends most prized feature the pinging system to the game. Many people have called the new pinging system a blatant copy of the one in Apex Legends. If games keep on heading in this direction there will be no truly original games just copies of each other if slightly different graphics and gameplay.