Brendan “PlayerUnknown” Greene, the creator of the much-hailed battle royale game PUBG, which incidentally also carries his name, has announced his exit from Krafton. Greene will now be heading an independent studio that will focus on new open-world games.
The Irish video game developer, who is better known by his artist name “PlayerUnknown.” is largely held responsible for popularising the battle royale genre. Greene originally designed the battle royale game mode as a mod for the ARMA game series. He then introduced it to a larger gamer base through H1Z1.
Marking an exit from the parent company Krafton, Greene’s PlayerUnknown Productions will now work as an independent game development studio based in Amsterdam, Netherlands. In a release, the company announces that Krafton will hold a minority stake in Greene’s new venture.
“I’m so very grateful to everyone at PUBG and Krafton for taking a chance on me and for the opportunities they afforded me over the past four years,” said Brendan “PlayerUnknown” Greene. “Today, I’m excited to take the next step on my journey to create the kind of experience I’ve envisaged for years. Again, I’m thankful for everyone at Krafton for supporting my plans, and I’ll have more to reveal more about our project at a later date.”
With its debut, PlayerUnknown Productions will now explore the systems needed to enable massive scale within open-world games. We can thus expect much bigger maps in the next games by Greene than the ones we see in PUBG. With Greene’s expertise, it is likely that the open-world games will have a battle royale mode to them.
Greene took the gaming world by storm with his perspective of battle royale as depicted in PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds (PUBG). After PUBG’s launch in 2017, the celebrated developer saw his idea gain momentum across the gaming industry. Even games with an open world nature started to introduce battle royale modes within their games. Fortnite, Apex Legends and even Call of Duty: Warzone are remarkable examples of what Greene achieved through his invention of battle royale.
The only hint on Greene’s future projects as of now is of a game called Prologue. Announced at The Game Awards 2019, the game is “an exploration of new technologies and gameplay” as per the developer. With it, Greene and his team plan to provide gamers with a unique experience every time they play the game. Now that is something to look forward to, though are no indications of any development on the game yet.