Brendan Greene, better known by his online persona PlayerUnknown, has announced today that he will be leaving PUBG developer and publisher Krafton to form his own independent studio, PlayerUnknown Productions. Greene has been credited with pioneering the battle royale genre, after creating PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds as an Arma mod, and later developing it into a full game with South Korean publisher Krafton.
In 2019, Greene moved to Amsterdam to set up PlayerUnknown Productions under Krafton’s PUBG Corporation, moving away from development on PUBG to work on new projects. Now, PlayerUnknown Productions will officially be splitting from Krafton to become an independent studio, with Krafton holding a minority stake in the studio. The studio’s first project, Prologue, was announced at the 2019 Game Awards, though it’s unclear whether the project will be impacted by the studio’s split.
“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 a 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.”
The press release adds that the team at PlayerUnknown Productions “are exploring the systems needed to enable massive scale within open-world games.”
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