Update July 7, 2017: PlayerUnknown has commented on the RPS interview in which he promised to finish his game within six months of its Early Access launch.
Brendan ‘PlayerUnknown’ Greene has walked back recently reported – but not recently made – promises to finish his game no more than six months after it entered Steam Early Access, which it did on March 23.
If you like battling the elements instead, check out our list of the best survival games.
Greene says he’s realised that restricting the launch “to a specific month could hinder us from delivering a fully featured game and/or lead to disappointment within the community if the launch deadline is not met… this is why we’re giving a launch window rather than an exact date.”
The new window is Q4 2017, so we should get a full release of PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds before the end of the year.
In fairness to Greene, the RPS interview in which he made those promises occurred at EGX Rezzed just a week after his game first entered Early Access, but was only published a couple of days ago. It’s understandable if his projections look a little different more than three months later.
You can read Greene’s statement in full on Steam.
Original story July 5, 2017:PUBG might have spawned from survival games such as DayZ, but that doesn’t mean it’ll be lingering in Early Access forever. You see, PUBG has one huge advantage over those games – it’s being made in an established game engine, Unreal.
“You look at Daybreak and Bohemia, they’re working on their own engines, and that’s just infinitely harder,” PUBG creative director Brendan ‘PlayerUnknown’ Greene explains in an RPS interview. “I think the ForgeLight engine is a ten year old engine. Now, they’ve improved it considerably since then, but it’s the same with the Arma engine, it’s 15 years old. Now DayZ are making a new engine, and that’s just something which takes time.”
Since PUBG doesn’t have this obstacle, it won’t be lingering in Early Access for a long time like DayZ, as that survival game has been forced to adapt and change its engine to keep up with tech advancements. A large portion of its resources are also allocated to engine development, where this just isn’t the case for PUBG at all.
“People tell us we’re not going to be out of Early Access in six months; challenge accepted,” Greene says. “I can guarantee you, six or seven months and we’re out of Early Access. It’s the team. It’s a matter of honour, you know? We will finish this game in six months.”