Playerunknown's Battlegrounds and Fortnite Battle Royale end mega-daft legal battle

The makers of Playerunknown's Battlegrounds have dropped their lawsuit against Fortnite Battle Royale makers Epic Games, ending a battle whose premise was even dafter than their own 'stag & hen weekend banter gets out of hand, escalates to murder'. PUBG Corp and parent company Bluehole had long griped about how similar Fortnite was to Plunkbat then in May escalated their discontent to court, claiming Epic infringed their copyright. We don't yet know quite why they've dropped the suit, nor who has 'won' here, but hopefully this is the end of the foolishness.

PUBG Corp's lawyers sent Epic's lawyers a letter of withdrawl on Monday and the case is listed as closed on the South Korean court's website, according to this Bloomberg report. Bloomberg say PUBG Corp have confirmed this with them, but wouldn't divulge any juicy details.

Did they settle? Did PUBG Corp rinse Epic? Did Epic laugh and tell them to do one? Did they secretly agree to swap games? Did Brendan "Plunk" Greene have to send chocolates and flowers? Must Epic rename their game Playerunknown's Fortnite Battle Royale and describe it as a "Plunkbut"? No idea. Both sides are keeping shtum for now.

PUBG Corp hadn't only objected to similarities, mind. They had previously expressed concern in interviews that Epic, as the makers of both Fortnite and the Unreal Engine that Plunkbat is built upon, might use their position to Battlegrounds' disadvantage.

Sure, Fortnite Battle Royale started out as basically Playerunknown's Battlegrounds transposed onto their own base-building shooter, but the two games have played quite differently from the start. The history of big video games is a history of "Oh what if we do that but with..." - not to mention that the genre existed before Battlegrounds was even around. And now Fortnite has shopping trolleys and jetpacks and football and... hey, PUBG Corp, please borrow the shopping trolley idea if it'll make you feel better.

Epic have a questionable lawsuit of their own on the go at the moment. They're suing a former tester, claiming that they suffered "actual losses" and "irreparable injury" after he leaked details of Fortnite's map-changing meteor strike. Ooh it's a regular battle royale of battle royale lawsuits round here.