1. Battle Royale (the Japanese film) is released in 2000.<p>2. DayZ kicks off the survival genre in ~2012.<p>3. A slew of DayZ mods happen. A dev on one mod, playerunknown, creates a Battle Royale inspired mod for DayZ in 2013.<p>4. In 2016 PU is hired as a consultant for the DayZ knockoff H1Z1 to make a Battle Royale mode.<p>5. PU is hired by Bluehole to make PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds, a Battle Royale game. Bluehole uses the Unreal 4 engine from Epic games.<p>6. PUBG is a hit in early 2017.<p>7. Epic games sees PUBG's success with their engine so they create a mod of their Unreal 4 building game "Fornite" that implements Battle Royale. It's released for free.<p>8. It's free, cartoony, and performs better than PUBG; this attracts the young youtube/twitch/etc crowd. Viral success happens.