The latest season of Fortnite sees you and your squad fending off insectoid alien enemies nicknamed Bugs while levelling up your battle pass — and if that sounds familiar, well, you aren’t the first to notice.
Arrowhead Game Studios, developer of Helldivers 2, another shooter where you squad up against insectoid alien enemies nicknamed Bugs, has now commented on the similarities — and suggested it was a case of imitation being a form of flattery.
“Hmmm… it’s giving ‘we have Helldivers at home,'” community manager Katherine Baskin wrote on the game’s Discord (thanks, Videogamer), before adding: “I’m not worried.”
“Fortnite is Fortnite, Helldivers is Helldivers,” Baskin continued. “If the kings of video game drip think our drip is cool enough to… inspire them… then that’s super cool. But our games couldn’t be more different from one another. There’s room for us all at the king’s table.”
When asked for his thoughts, Arrowhead CEO Shams Jorjani simply replied that the new Fortnite season “feels very democratic,” a reference to Helldivers’ own setting, in an era of human expansion into space dubbed the ‘Great Democratization.’
In reality, Fortnite has riffed on numerous other games, movies and overall genres in the past, with little left that it has not either offered its own version of, or collaborated to include. And, because it is Fortnite, the new season of its blockbuster battle royale also involves you fighting alongside a humanoid panda, the Power Rangers and Spartan soldiers from Halo.
So far, at least, the new gameplay appears to be going down well. According to developer Epic Games, players have now squashed more than 250 million Bugs since their invasion into Fortnite began last week. Next up for Fortnite will be the addition of pet-like Companions, leaks suggest, which will include a turtle riding a skateboard.
Tom Phillips is IGN’s News Editor. You can reach Tom at tom_phillips@ign.com or find him on Bluesky @tomphillipseg.bsky.social
