https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/apex-legends-fortnite-help-electronic-arts-gamestop-hurt-activision-1028192230 The article argues that they have changed the gaming industry, but personally I don't see what's so groundbreaking about either. Sure, they are battle royale games, but is it really that big of a change?
I think they definitely changed the industry. You have to remember that Fortnite didn’t even start out as a F2P game. It was a shitty tower defense game first, and it wasn’t until they released the free BR version of the game that everything changed. Games-as-service never REALLY took off until Fortnite found its success, with every game nowadays trying to emulate the “season pass” model of monetization. But in my opinion, the biggest changes it caused aren’t the games themselves, but from a mass audience’s perspective of them. Without Fortnite, you probably wouldn’t see games in the news as often, or sponsors pumping millions and millions of dollars into in-game promotions, or seeing your favorite streamer on daytime talk shows. And now that the success and exposure of such an accessible genre is out there, companies want that same success for themselves. For better or worse, Fortnite changed the direction of the industry.
But that's the thing, none of that is new. So you can't really say they changed the industry. They boosted what was already there, but for the specific niche of BRs they for sure set a new bar on some regards
They changed the revenue model of games forever. So many of my peers expect games to be free or at least <$15 with IGPs.
So I would say they are probably the most polished games in BR. I’ve played H1, PUBG, etc and was really impressed with their respective takes on the game. It feels to me theres still a lot of subtle originality you can add to BR genre to create a very unique experience. Idk if they’ve changed the gaming industry more than what H1 and other BR games have already. They recycle a lot of things still. Apex blew up cuz it has all the amazing mechanics and is F2P and many streamers were paid to stream the game. We’ll see if it lasts
They are just an example of the trend of game dev optimizing towards revenue, low barrier to entry and high replayability with monetization methods that target multiple levels of spending.
You could say they changed the BR industry, but that's about it and even that is up to discussion. They did made the genre a lot more accessible though