Treyarch Was Working On Battle Royale For Black Ops 4 Before PUBG/Fortnite Boom

One of the biggest rumors that came out while Call of Duty Black Ops 4 was being teased was that the game was going to have its own Battle Royale mode like PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds and Fortnite. Many were ok with this idea, especially since both games showed that the playstyle could work, and with Call of Duty, we could get another take on this genre. Sure enough, Blackout was announced, and many are already calling it a worthy addition to the franchise.

However, for those of you who feel that developer Treyarch is just “copying trends” into their title, they have a bit of a surprise for you. They were working on Blackout before PUBG and Fortnite even released. This news comes from Dan Bunting of Treyarch, who told Eurogamer:

“It’s no secret to anybody in the industry that battle royale took the world by storm when it first hit early last year,” Bunting explained. “Our team is a team of intense gamers. Of course, we play the games everybody plays. We were playing a lot of different games early last year and it was clearly a phenomenon that was going to change the game industry. Our thinking started to formulate around that time.”

That changes how you view the mode, doesn’t it? Even if they started working on it just before PUBG got released to Steam Early Access in May of last year, that’s still well before the boom of the genre arrived, which shows just how much foresight Treyarch had about what was coming.

Make no mistake though, they’re trying to ensure Blackout is much different from other Battle Royale games, and that starts with their engine:

“We have been developing advanced engine tools for our developers to be more effective and more efficient in building large open spaces for a long time.

Black Ops 4 arrives on October 12th.