10 dead battle royales that failed at being Fortnite

A lot of battle royale games popped up in the wake of Fortnite and PUBG's success, but most of them ended up dying

Final Fantasy 7 The First Soldier / Square Enix

When 2017 saw PUBG and Fortnite explode onto the scene, it wasn’t long before every developer under the sun tried to get in on the battle royale action. Some of them succeeded, most did not. While we still occasionally see someone new throw their hat in the ring of the genre, things have settled down now and the kings of the genre are firmly established, to the point where it’s unlikely we’ll see any more crack into that upper echelon any time soon.

We’ve already covered the best battle royale games, but today we’re looking back at those that showed promise but didn’t make it as we cover some of the dead battle royale games that you can no longer play.

Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon: Frontline

Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Frontline / Ubisoft

This one only makes the list on a technicality, as it never officially launched before it was canceled. This battle royale was attempting to fit into the more realistic military side of things, but in a closed beta test, it mostly got derided for being too much like Call of Duty Warzone, which is never a good sign. So, Ubisoft canceled it in July 2022, just 10 months after it was announced.

The Culling 2

The Culling 2 / Xaviant Games

This was one of the most high-profile disasters to come out of the battle royale craze and was one of the first big signs that the boom period for the genre was starting to calm down. The original Culling game was one of the very first battle royales that caught people’s attention before even PUBG got a standalone release, so a sequel seemed like a surefire success.

Unfortunately, like many battle royales of this time, it was rushed out the door for fear of missing the window of public interest and, as a result, it was a buggy mess that almost no one played. Just a few days after launch it was common to be the only person in a match, and thus automatically be granted a victory – and while that is objectively very funny, it’s not engaging gameplay that’ll make someone stick around.

Radical Heights

Radical Heights / Boss Key Productions

Radical Heights was one of the first big releases to get labeled as a lazy Fortnite clone, and in hindsight, it’s easy to see why. The colorful and whacky aesthetic made it very easy to draw comparisons, which meant that people weren’t willing to give it the time of day, even though it did have quite a big marketing engine behind it. It did alright for a while, but ultimately never left early access and shut down in 2018.

Hyper Scape

Hyper Scape / Ubisoft

That’s right, Ubisoft’s tried to elbow its way into this genre more than once, although admittedly, Hyper Scape did at least release, so it has one up on Tom Clancy. Along with a sci-fi aesthetic, Hyper Scape tried to stand out by making small tweaks to genre tropes. Rather than a circle that slowly closes in on the map, instead entire sections of the map would disappear entirely, and once you got down to the final few, you could claim a victory by getting to a crown and holding it for 60 seconds, rather than simply being the last person standing.

It launched to a mixed reception, but it’s playerbase kept it going for just under two years, launching in July 2020 and shutting down in April 2022.

Ring of Elysium

Ring of Elysium / Tencent

Ring of Elysium is one of the more successful battle royales that are now defunct, but looking back it’s hard to see why. It was essentially a clone of PUBG in every meaningful way, with the only major difference being a less realistic set of character designs that focused mostly on hot women. It sounds like a fairly transparent idea, but it worked for a while, peaking at 52k players around its 2019 launch, and lasting all the way until September 2023 before getting the axe, having sunk to a daily player count of around 300.

Fallout 76: Nuclear Winter

Fallout 76 Nuclear Winter / Bethesda

The battle royale mode added by the Nuclear Winter update was seen as a rather desperate attempt to get more players into Fallout 76 after its dodgy launch roughly a year earlier. While some people quite liked it, there were many glaring flaws that stopped it from being the shot of adrenaline the game needed, and eventually the mode was discontinued entirely, with no plans for it to ever return.

Rumbleverse

Rumbleverse / Epic Games

Why Epic Games thought they needed another kid-friendly battle royale in under their banner I will never know. By Rumbleverse’s 2022 launch, Fortnite was already the world’s most efficient money printing machine, but the team behind it believed that the gimmick of only having melee combat would be enough to earn it a decent place at Fortnite’s side. That just didn’t happen though, as while the gimmick was fun, it didn’t have much longevity, so it struggled to keep players around. In the end it lasted just seven months, launching in August 2022 and shutting down in February 2023.

Rapture Rejects

Rapture Rejects / tinyBuild

Before doing the research for this list, I had no idea that Cynadine & Happiness had lent their universe to a battle royale game, released in late 2018 on Steam. Unfortunately, it didn’t review well, and those who did pick it up weren’t happy with the monetization methods and the fact that it was often a struggle to get a lobby even two thirds of the way full. It stumbled on for a while, but eventually the developers decided to shut it all down in 2021.

Apex Legends Mobile

Apex Legends Mobile / Electronic Arts

Both Fortnite and PUBG have quite successful mobile versions, so it’s understandable that Apex Legends – generally considered to be the other titan of the genre – would make one as well, but it just didn’t take. It may have something to do with the fact that Apex’s player base has fewer casual gamers, and thus the hardened PC and console veterans weren’t interested in touch-screen controls. In the end, EA decided it just wasn’t worth the effort, pulling the plug on the mobile version in 2022.

Final Fantasy 7: The First Soldier

Final Fantasy 7 The First Soldier / Square Enix

A battle royale set in the Final Fantasy universe is an undeniably appealing concept, which is why it’s such a surprise that this game ended up flopping. Like the previous entry, being on mobile definitely didn’t help it, as that’s not typically a platform that Final Fantasy’s core player base has an interest in, but on top of that the game’s UI and control scheme gave people a lot of issues, and it resulted in many people simply not giving it a chance, leading to it being shut down in January 2023, just over a year after its launch.