Why The Creator Of PUBG Just Left The Company

Brendan "PlayerUnknown" Greene, also known as the creator of "PlayerUnknown's Battleground" and the battle royale mode itself, just left parent company Krafton to start his own studio called PLAYERUNKNOWN Productions. Greene will be staying in Amsterdam to lead the new independent startup, though Krafton will "hold a minority stake." 

"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," Greene said in the press release. "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."

So it looks like Greene wants to pursue his game development visions with his own studio. It's unclear what kind of games the team will be working on, but the press release mentions "exploring the systems needed to enable massive scale within open-world games." Open-world games will likely be involved, though they could be battle royale, open-world RPGs, or who knows what.

"PUBG" should continue as is, considering it's been doing just fine without Greene behind the project for the past few years. Some believe Greene's split spurred the rebrand from "PUBG" to "PUBG: Battlegrounds," which raised more questions than answers, but the game seems to still be chugging on without any sign of stopping despite the name change. It's been taking cues from "Among Us," experimenting with a fresh take on battle royale's respawn feature, and brewing big plans for the next two years when it comes to expanding its IP and next-gen console capabilities. 

Greene's departure isn't the end, but a possible start on more to come in the battle royale genre. He first brought the game mode into "H1Z1" before he thought up the iconic game that carries his name, "PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds" (PUBG). PUBG in turn inspired "Fortnite," which has been accused of being a total ripoff, and other battle royale games and modes that gamers know today. 

The "father of battle royale" has been with Korean gaming company Krafton since 2016 but stopped directly working on "PUBG" in 2019. He then moved to Amsterdam to lead Krafton's PUBG Special Projects, where he began the development of the new game "Prologue." He called the game "an exploration of new technologies and gameplay," but it's still unclear what that phrasing actually means. PlayerUnknown fans haven't had much of an update since its announcement in 2019.