PlayerUnknown has officially left PUBG Studios

Brendan Greene, better known as ‘PlayerUnknown’, has left PUBG Studios owner Krafton along with his new independent studio.

In a press release, Greene announced his decision to depart Krafton, the South Korean publisher that owns PUBG Studios and published PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds (PUBG).

Greene’s company PlayerUnknown Productions, a new independent studio set up to “explore, experiment and create new technologies, pipelines, and gameplay”, will spin off into a separate entity.

Based in Amsterdam, the new studio will be “exploring the systems needed to enable massive scale within open-world games”. Krafton will hold a minority stake in PlayerUnknown Productions.

Greene has been working on new IP Prologue for the past several years. Since the PlayerUnkown Productions site prominently hosts the teaser trailer for the game, it could suggest that development is continuing.

In March 2019 Greene revealed that he was leaving the PUBG development team in Seoul to lead a new division of PUBG Corp, Amsterdam-based PUBG Special Projects.

“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 statement.

“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.”

Last month, PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds was officially renamed PUBG: Battlegrounds ahead of a free play week from August 10-16. A dataminer who first broke the news of the free trial claimed Krafton was “gauging player responses” with a view to adopting the model permanently.

A mobile sequel to PUBG called PUBG: New State will be coming to Android and iOS devices later in the year.

The game will take place in a brand new map called TROI, which will be 8×8 kilometres in size and support up to 100 players.

A report earlier this year suggested that PUBG Corporation was planning to release a battle royale mobile title this year “based on PUBG”. The report also claimed another “PUBG-related” PC and console game will release by 2022, though it’s not clear if this will be a port of New State or an entirely new game.