'PUBG' creator Brendan Greene leaves Krafton to form independent studio

Brendan "PlayerUnknown" Greene, best known as creator of PUBG: Battlegrounds (previously known as PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds), is going independent. His PlayerUnknown Productions studio has spun out from PUBG owner Krafton, which will hold a minority stake in the company.

“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.”

Greene left the core PUBG team in 2019 and moved from Seoul (where Krafton is based) to Amsterdam to lead the PUBG Special Projects division. PlayerUnknown Productions is "exploring the systems needed to enable massive scale within open-world games," according to a press release. The only game listed on the studio's website is Prologue, for which Greene released an atmospheric teaser in late 2019, so it seems he's taken that game with him.

Greene's departure from Krafton is notable, given that he's effectively the father of the battle royale genre that's dominated the gaming landscape over the last few years. Before PUBG, Greene came to prominence as a developer of battle royale mods for ARMA 2 and H1Z1.