Brendan Greene | |
|---|---|
 Greene in 2018 | |
| Born | March 29, 1976 |
| Nationality | Irish |
| Other names | PlayerUnknown |
| Occupation(s) | Video game designer, video game director |
| Known for | PUBG: Battlegrounds |
Brendan Greene (born March 29, 1976), better known as PlayerUnknown, is an Irish video game developer. He is best known for his work on PUBG: Battlegrounds . He left active development on the game to form PUBG Special Projects and PlayerUnknown Productions in March 2019. [2] [3]
In 2013, Greene was living in Brazil as an event photographer and freelance website designer. [4] While trying to save up enough money to buy a plane ticket back to Ireland, he found himself playing video games, particularly the open world survival DayZ mod for Arma 2 . He modded the game himself, working under the pseudonym "PlayerUnknown". After experimenting with last-man-standing gameplay, in 2013, he eventually released a mod called DayZ: Battle Royale , named after the 2000 Japanese action film Battle Royale . [5]
After the release of Arma 3 , Greene started working on a modification for the game, named PlayerUnknown's Battle Royale. The mod followed the same basic last-man standing principle of the Battle Royale DayZ mod, while also introducing some new features like the airplane that dropped players across a wider terrain [6] and an online leaderboard.
After DayZ: Battle Royale and PlayerUnknown's Battle Royale achieved success within the Arma 2 and Arma 3 Community, Greene was recruited by Sony Online Entertainment as an advisor for the development of a battle royale game mode for H1Z1, recreating the basic elements of DayZ: Battle Royale. [7] H1Z1 released into early access in 2015 with a battle royale mode now known as H1Z1: King of the Kill . [8]
In 2016, H1Z1: King of the Kill caught the attention of South Korean game company Krafton, which reached out to Greene about creating his own game based on his previous work. Greene moved to Korea to join Krafton as a creative director, working on the game that became PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds , which Greene described as "that sort of final realization of my vision". [9] [10]
In March 2019, Greene left development at PUBG and moved to Amsterdam to form PUBG Special Projects. [11] In December 2019, Greene announced a new game called Prologue under a new studio PlayerUnknown Productions, described as "an exploration of new technologies and gameplay." [12]
Greene announced in August 2021 that he was leaving Krafton while maintaining his PlayerUnknown Productions in Amsterdam. He stated that the studio would not work on the battle royale genre but something more experimental. [13] The new studio continued work on the Prologue game. [14]
Unknown Worlds Entertainment is an American video game developer based in San Francisco. The studio is best known for the Natural Selection and Subnautica series. In October 2021, the studio was acquired by South Korean video game developer Krafton.
Video gaming in India is an emerging market since India is experiencing strong growth in online gaming, making it one of the top gaming markets in the world. Over the past few decades, the Indian gaming industry has gone from close to nonexistent in the 1990s to one of the top markets globally in the late 2010s. In 2019, the online gaming market in India was estimated at ₹6,200 crore (US$740 million) with an estimated 300 million gamers, a 41.6% increase from 2018. As of 2021, it is one of the top five mobile gaming markets in the world. By the third quarter of 2020 there were more than 7.4 billion mobile game downloads. According to the "State of India Gaming Report," released by venture capital firm Lumikai with Google, as of November 2023, there were 568 million gamers in India. Additionally, it was reported that in FY23, 41% of gamers were female and 66% were from non-metros, with each user on average spending 10–12 hours per week on video games.
Z1 Battle Royale is a battle royale game developed and published by Daybreak Game Company. The game's development began after the original H1Z1 was spun off into two separate projects in early 2016: H1Z1: Just Survive and H1Z1: King of the Kill. The games were further split as separate projects in October 2017, with Just Survive dropping the H1Z1 name, and King of the Kill becoming simply H1Z1.
The Culling was a first-person action battle royale game developed and published by Xaviant. Following an early access beta phase, the game was released for Linux, Microsoft Windows, and Xbox One on October 5, 2017.
PUBG: Battlegrounds is a 2017 battle royale game developed by PUBG Studios and published by Krafton. The game, which was inspired by 2000's Japanese film Battle Royale, is based on previous mods created by Brendan "PlayerUnknown" Greene for other games, and expanded into a standalone game under Greene's creative direction. It is the first game in the PUBG Universe series.
A battle royale game is an online multiplayer video game genre that blends last-man-standing gameplay with the survival, exploration and scavenging elements of a survival game. Battle royale games involve dozens to hundreds of players, who start with minimal equipment and then must eliminate all other opponents while avoiding being trapped outside a shrinking "safe area", with the winner being the last player or team alive.
Fortnite Battle Royale is a free-to-play battle royale video game developed and published by Epic Games. It is a companion game to Fortnite: Save the World, a cooperative survival game with construction elements. It was initially released in early access on September 26, 2017, for macOS, PlayStation 4, Windows, and Xbox One, followed by ports for iOS, Nintendo Switch, and Android. Epic dropped the early access label for the game on June 29, 2020. Versions for the Xbox Series X/S and PlayStation 5 were released as launch titles in late 2020.
Rules of Survival was a free-to-play multiplayer online battle royale game developed and published by NetEase Games. It was first released via beta access in November 2017 and released globally on May 31, 2018. By October 2018, the game had reached 230 million players worldwide.
Realm Royale is a free-to-play third-person shooter battle royale game developed by Heroic Leap Games. The game features multiple character classes each with unique abilities. It is a spin-off of the hero shooter Paladins, where it originated as a game mode known as Paladins: Battlegrounds. The game was released for Microsoft Windows via Steam's early access program in June 2018, with versions for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One released two months later. Realm Royale entered open beta on PS4 and Xbox One on January 22, 2019. On May 24, 2019, the game entered closed beta on Nintendo Switch and went into open beta on June 20, 2019. On August 22, 2022, the game was relaunched and updated as Realm Royale Reforged, marking the first update to the game since February 2020.
Super Animal Royale is an indie battle royale video game developed and published by Pixile Studios. The game features 64-player matches starring anthropomorphic animals who use a variety of weapons and firearms from a 2D overhead perspective and was built using the Unity game engine. An early version debuted on Steam Early Access on December 12, 2018, with a free-to-play demo version released the following month in January 2019. An Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S version appeared on Xbox Game Pass in game preview on June 1, 2021. The game left early access on Steam and was released for macOS, Microsoft Windows, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S on August 26, 2021, and for Google Stadia on December 14, 2021.
ZombsRoyale.io is a battle royale game developed by End Game Interactive. It was released for web browsers in 2018, with iOS and Android ports later that year. A simplified take on the genre, game matches follow up to 100 players who must fight on a large map to be the last survivors. It uses simple 2D graphics and a top-down perspective. The game has amassed over 120,000,000 downloads and unique players across iOS, Android, Web Browser, and PC as of 2024.
An auto battler, also known as auto chess, is a subgenre of strategy video games that typically feature chess-like elements where players place characters on a grid-shaped battlefield during a preparation phase, who then fight the opposing team's characters without any further direct input from the player. The genre was popularized by Dota Auto Chess in early 2019 and saw other games in the genre released soon after by more established studios, such as Teamfight Tactics, Dota Underlords, and Hearthstone's Battlegrounds.
Krafton Inc. is a South Korean video game publisher and holding company based in Bundang-gu, Seongnam. It was created in November 2018 to serve as the parent company for Bluehole, founded by Chang Byung-gyu in Seoul in March 2007, and its subsidiaries. The company has published several notable video game titles including TERA, PUBG: Battlegrounds, New State Mobile,The Callisto Protocol and Moonbreaker. According to Forbes, Chang has a net worth of $2.9 billion and is one of the seven gaming billionaires in South Korea.
Free Fire is a free-to-play battle royale game developed and published by Garena for Android and iOS. It was released on 8 December 2017. It became the most downloaded mobile game globally in 2019 and has over 1 billion downloads on Google Play Store. In the first quarter of 2021 it was the highest grossing mobile game in the US. In November 2019, it surpassed $1 billion in lifetime revenue. As of 2021, Free Fire had surpassed 150 million daily active users.
Battlegrounds Mobile India (BGMI), previously known as PUBG Mobile India, is a version of PUBG Mobile, available in India. It is an online multiplayer battle royale game by Krafton. The game was initially released on 2 July 2021 for Android devices, and on 18 August 2021 for iOS devices. There are two official tournaments in a calendar year in BGMI, held by Krafton India Esports. The first is BGMI India Series (BGIS) and the later one is BGMI Pro Series (BMPS).
New State Mobile is a multiplayer online battle royale video game developed by PUBG Studios and published by Krafton. The game was released on November 11, 2021, for iOS, iPadOS and Android through the App Store, Google Play and Samsung Galaxy Store. It is the second installment in the PUBG Universe, separated from PUBG: Battlegrounds and its mobile version.
PUBG Mobile is a free-to-play battle royale video game co-developed by LightSpeed & Quantum Studio and PUBG Studios. It is a mobile game adaptation of PUBG: Battlegrounds. It was initially released for Android and iOS on 19th of March 2018.
BattlEye is a proprietary anti-cheat software designed to detect players that hack or abusively use exploits in an online game. It was initially released as a third-party anti-cheat for Battlefield Vietnam in 2004 and has since been officially implemented in numerous video games, primarily shooter games such as PUBG: Battlegrounds, Arma 3, Destiny 2, and DayZ.
List of esports events in 2022.