Let’s talk numbers: PUBG this is a peak of 2.9 million simultaneous players on Steam reached in 2018. It is also e-sport competitions which continue to attract hundreds of thousands of spectators (511,000 in 2024, thank you escharts), and almost 60 million dollars distributed as rewards during official championships since the game’s launch in 2017. And 8 years later, it remains indestructible.
Despite increased competition and a genre that many consider moribund (at least creatively) for several years, PUBG continues to evolve, with Unreal Engine 5 in the pipeline. The next major innovation announced is the integration of non-player characters controlled by artificial intelligence. At the same time, Brendan Greene, the creator of PUBG (who jumped ship in 2019) has even larger ambitions by exploring the creation of a metaverse.
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During CES 2025, Krafton, the publisher of PUBGrevealed a collaboration with Nvidia aimed at introducing “co-playable characters” in the game. These CPCs, equipped with advanced AI, are designed to interact fluidly with players, with the aim of offering a comfortable (and unprecedented) cooperative experience to users. The first of these companions, named “Ally”, will be able to communicate verbally and strategize alongside players, simulating a human teammate. We can’t wait to see how players will make these AI do anything.
For his part, Brendan Greene is focusing on even more ambitious projects on paper. After leaving the development of PUBG in 2019 to pursue independent aspirations, Greene and his studio, PlayerUnknown Productions, are working on the project Artemisdescribed as a “infinite digital universe” at the microphone of our colleagues at IGN. Artemis would offer a procedural simulation of an Earth-sized world. Greene describes this project as an open platform where users will be able to create and interact in interconnected virtual worlds, similar to a “internet 3D”. He emphasizes that, unlike other metaverse attempts which he considers to be “IP bubbles” isolated, Artemis aims to establish a universal protocol allowing true interconnection between these virtual worlds. Yes, it’s still the same metaverse chimera.
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