Overview
- Krafton announced Thursday that it has stopped work on PUBG: Black Budget after an internal review concluded the game’s current direction could not deliver a lasting player experience.
- Black Budget was an extraction-style, first-person PvPvE shooter set on an island trapped in a time loop with supernatural anomalies and it underwent multiple closed alpha and community tests, the largest of which ran in June.
- This cancellation is the second recent PUBG spin-off shutdown following the March cancellation of PUBG: Blindspot, and Krafton said it will carry lessons from testing into future projects.
- Krafton continues to pursue other experiments in the franchise, including PUBG: Ded. Net announced at Gamescom in August and being developed by its Madison, Wisconsin studio.
- The company’s moves reflect a tighter focus on viability checks for live-service experiments as the extraction-shooter market becomes more crowded and Krafton seeks projects that can sustain long-term engagement.