PUBG: Battlegrounds - The Game That Started the Battle Royale Boom
How PUBG grew from a mod into the game that popularized battle royale, how a match plays out, its records, and how to play it today.
PUBG: BATTLEGROUNDS is a game in which up to 100 players parachute from a plane onto an island, scavenge for gear starting empty-handed, and fight inside a shrinking safe zone until one player (or one team) is left standing. After first launching in early access in 2017, it swept PC bangs and the Steam charts around the world in a short time, and as many games went on to copy its structure, the genre name "battle royale" came into wide use.
In this article, we look at how PUBG went from one person's game mod to the flagship title of a Korean company, how a match actually unfolds, and why it still comes up whenever people talk about the genre. Sales figures and records are limited to numbers confirmed by sources such as Wikipedia.
At a Glance
| Item | Details |
|---|---|
| Release | Early access in March 2017 (PC), full release on December 20, 2017 |
| Developer | PUBG Studios (under Krafton; formerly Bluehole and PUBG Corporation) |
| Publisher | Krafton |
| Platforms | Windows, Xbox, PlayStation (the mobile version is a separate game) |
| Genre | Battle royale shooter |
It was originally called "PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds" and was renamed to the current "PUBG: BATTLEGROUNDS" in 2021. Since January 2022, it has been free to play on all platforms.
Origins
PUBG began as a game mod made by Brendan Greene from Ireland. He went by the nickname "PlayerUnknown," and around 2013 he created "DayZ: Battle Royale," based on DayZ, a popular mod for the military game ARMA 2. As the name suggests, the mod was inspired by the Japanese film Battle Royale (2000).
Greene felt that maps in existing multiplayer shooters were small and easy to memorize, so they quickly became repetitive. He therefore designed maps too large to memorize and randomly scattered items so that every match would play out differently. There's also a story that he originally wanted the safe zone to be a square, but because he lacked coding experience at the time he made it a circle, and that approach carried over into PUBG.
He later made a mod for ARMA 3 and served as a consultant on Sony Online Entertainment's H1Z1. Around that time, Chang-han Kim, who led Bluehole Ginno Games in Korea, contacted Greene and proposed they make a new battle royale game together. Greene moved to Korea as creative director; development began in early 2016 and the game was announced in June of that year. The team started with about 35 people and grew to 70 by June 2017, and the game was built on Unreal Engine 4.
As the game quickly took off, the development team was spun off as PUBG Corporation in September 2017, and in 2018 the holding company Krafton was established to handle publishing. In December 2020, PUBG Corporation was merged into Krafton as PUBG Studios. Greene stepped down as lead designer in 2019.
How It Plays
A match breaks down into three broad stages. Greene described it as three small games strung together: the drop, the looting, and the fighting.
- The drop: Every player starts aboard a plane that flies across the map. The flight path changes every match, so you need to decide quickly when to jump and where to land. Popular spots have more good gear, but they're also more dangerous.
- Looting: When you land, all you have are your clothes. You search buildings and towns for guns, armor, healing items, and vehicles. Items are placed randomly each match.
- Combat and survival: Every few minutes, the safe zone, marked by a blue wall, shrinks toward a random location. Staying outside it steadily drains your health, so players are herded into an ever smaller space until they have no choice but to meet.
On top of that, bombs rain down on areas marked in red, and planes drop supply crates trailing red smoke that pull players to a single spot. You can play solo, as a duo, or in a four-person squad, and choose between first-person and third-person perspectives. A match usually lasts no more than 30 minutes. There are several maps of different sizes and terrain, starting with the original island, Erangel. When you win, the game shows the phrase "winner winner chicken dinner," an English expression said to date back to the Great Depression, which Greene had already been using in his earlier mods.
Why It's a Classic
PUBG's biggest significance is that it refined large-scale survival competition into a game anyone could easily pick up. Critics noted that despite its technical flaws, it was accessible regardless of skill level and made you want to play again because every match was different. Its design, which sought a balance between ARMA's realistic gunplay and H1Z1's fast pace, is also frequently mentioned.
Another factor is how fun it is to watch. The flow of sneaking quietly before a firefight suddenly breaks out, and the tension of the final circle, made for great streams and videos, and Greene himself said streamers and creators played a big part in its growth.
The records it set are clear as well.
- It sold 1 million copies in 16 days of early access and passed $100 million in revenue in 79 days, earning it Guinness World Records. It received seven Guinness records in total before its full release.
- Its concurrent player count on Steam broke the previous all-time record in September 2017 and later climbed to about 2.28 million (2,279,084), making it the first game on Steam to exceed 2 million concurrent players.
- PC and console sales have surpassed 75 million copies. Cumulative revenue including the mobile version was estimated at about $13 billion as of the third quarter of 2022.
- It won Best Multiplayer Game at The Game Awards 2017 and became the first game to be nominated for Game of the Year while still in early access.
In Korea, it made headlines in 2017 by overtaking first Overwatch and then League of Legends in PC bang market share.
Series and Influence
After PUBG, many games adopted its structure of 100 players dropping in, a shrinking safe zone, and starting empty-handed, and battle royale became one of the major shooter genres. Wikipedia describes the game as the title that popularized the battle royale genre.
On smartphones, PUBG Mobile, developed by a studio under Tencent, launched worldwide in March 2018 and surpassed 500 million downloads by 2019. The PC game also kept expanding, with a full Xbox One release in 2018 and a PlayStation 4 version in December of the same year, followed by the addition of cross-play between consoles. In esports, numerous tournaments have been held, starting with the Gamescom Invitational in 2017.
How to Play Today
- PC: You can download it for free on Steam. When the game went free to play in 2022, a paid tier called "BATTLEGROUNDS Plus" was introduced, which includes features such as ranked mode and custom servers. Players who bought the game before it went free were automatically upgraded to Plus.
- Console: Support for Xbox One and PlayStation 4 ended in November 2025, replaced by dedicated versions for Xbox Series X|S and PlayStation 5.
- If you're new: Starting in third-person squads with friends gives you a wider view, making it easier to read the situation. Landing somewhere quiet to gear up, then checking in advance which way the safe zone is shrinking and moving early, will help you survive.
Matches are long and tense, so it's hard to enjoy casually in a short session, but the fact that every match tells a different story is the same as when it first came out.