PUBG 2: PlayerUnknown Greene Not Making New Version

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For all the PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds (PUBG) fans hoping to see what PUBG 2 will be like, there is bad news. Brendan Greene, the “PlayerUnknown” of PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds, recently said he is done with battle royale games and is moving onto something new.

Not interested in PUBG 2

Greene, who popularized the battle royale concept, has worked on PUBG for the past five years. During that period he, has been the director and designer of PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds. Although he will still work on PUBG as a consulting creative director, he will be focusing more on new initiatives for the company, he told GamesIndustry.biz.

Greene will now head a new division called PUBG Special Projects. This new division, according to Greene, “will explore new possibilities of interaction and connection within the game space.”

He also won’t be working from PUBG Corp.’s headquarters in Seoul, which will continue work on the battle royale game. Greene will move to the company’s new Amsterdam office, where he will work on developing a completely new division to “focus on research & game development.” Multiplayer experiences will still be the focus, but Greene told GamesIndustry.biz he is not keen on making PUBG 2.

“The last man standing concept is great, but I’ve done that. I don’t really intend to make PUBG 2,” Greene said. “I’ve done battle royale, it’s time to try something else.”

Greene is also not very interested in killing players anymore.

“I think I’ve provided others with a good way of killing each other,” he says, adding that he wants to work on other things now.

As far as what those other things could be, Greene says he will be looking at different ways to connect people and offer a new and different gaming experience. The Special Projects division will help him do that as he will have a free hand to develop whatever he wants to develop.

Further, Greene said that “we’re not doing this for profit,” at least for now, and there is no “deadline as well.” Instead, the objective is to “be curious for some time.”

Hard to recreate PUBG’s success

Although Greene aims to move onto other things, he wants the battle royale genre to grow and develop more as an eSport and hopes to see more developers coming up with their own versions of battle royale. Greene praised Apex Legends, saying it is an amazing game that didn’t “hype anything, they just announced and delivered a great game.”

However, Greene admits that it has gotten more difficult for developers to enter the space now, and he sees a similar challenge for himself. It would be very difficult to match the success of PUBG, no matter what game or project his new division comes up with.

“Oh yeah, I’m f***ed,” he said. “But that’s why I feel so lucky to work with PUBG Corp.”

Celebrating second anniversary

PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds is celebrating its second anniversary this month. Although the game didn’t launch officially until December 2017, it was available on Steam Early Access in March 2017. To mark the occasion, the developer is handing out a dusty denim cap for free.

The developer also penned a second anniversary letter informing fans about the hard work the studio has put in. The letter mentions the Fix PUBG campaign, which was launched in response to complaints from players. The campaign ended in November and helped the developer focus on stability and quality.

To claim the free cap, console players just need to log in between April 9 and May 7. PC players will have to visit the in-game store, where they can grab the cap for free between March 27 and April 24. To mark the first anniversary, PUBG gave out a free weapon skin.

According to statistics from SuperData, PUBG was the top earner among premium games last year. It generated $1.028 billion in revenue in 2018. Meanwhile, rival Fortnite was the top earner overall last year with $2.4 billion in digital revenue.

However, PUBG‘s numbers include only revenue from PC, Xbox and PlayStation versions of the game and not the mobile version.  If the revenue from the mobile version for the game is also considered, then PUBG could be among the overall highest-earning games of 2018.

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