Just taking a quick, mildly-interested glance, gameplay for H1Z1: Battle Royale looks like the perfect mix of the hyperrealism of PUBG and the wackiness of Fortnite. Could that combination lead to the Daybreak Game Company's free-to-play battle royale game entry becoming the preferred choice?
Time will tell. Keep in mind, PUBG started the trend but its lengthy (and buggy) development allowed Epic Games to retool its existing assets from the main Fortnite game into a free-to-play battle royal mode. Fornite
surpassed PUBG back in February and hasn't looked back, despite the fact that Epic's developers openly admitted that they used PUBG's popularity
as an inspiration for their own mode.
Back in March, Daybreak
announced that H1Z1 was going free-to-play and the large turnout for the Open Beta is certainly strong evidence that the studio made the correct choice.
The Open Beta has (thus-far) peaked at 1.5 million users, leading to login issues. Daybreak Games issued a statement that they're hard at work to solve the issues.