Brendan “PlayerUnknown” Greene has announced plans to step away from development of his flagship game, PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds, to head up a new division of PUBG Corp. that will be focuing on new research and game development projects.
In a letter to his fans on social media, PlayerUnknown spoke about how he will remain as a consulting director on PUBG but development will now be led by other members of the team he has worked with over the past three years.
His new team, based in Amsterdam instead of Seoul, South Korea, will be tasked with “exploring, experimenting, and creating new technologies, tools, pipelines, and gameplay” for PUBG Corp.
PlayerUnknown is one of the most well known video game developers in the world thanks to PUBG’s explosion in popularity in 2017. PlayerUnknown has not only become the main face of the game, but the main spokesmen for PUBG Corp at times. Anytime PUBG is being run as a tournament or at a large-scale event like Gamescom, PlayerUnknown has been there to give away trophies, sign autographs, and meet fans.
Regardless of how far down the battle royale pecking order PUBG has fallen in the past few years, there is no denying the impact that the game, and PlayerUnknown as a whole, has had on the genre. Without it setting the benchmark, games like Fortnite and Apex Legends might not have been created.
PUBG is still one of the most played games on Steam at the time of writing and its mobile version is incredibly popular in Asia— so PlayerUnknown has a lot to prove in his new venture if he wants to top the popularity PUBG has had since release.
