The archive · Games & Play · Product decision · 2017–2021
PUBG drops 100 players on one island and invents battle royale — 50M copies by 2018
Bluehole bets Brendan Greene's last-man-standing mod can carry a full game: 100 players parachute onto one island — 2M sales in weeks, 75M copies by 2021.
PUBG Corporation (Bluehole / Krafton)
What it had to solve
Brendan Greene had spent years building Battle Royale mods inside ARMA and H1Z1, but a mod lives and dies inside another game. In 2017 Korean studio Bluehole hired him to build the mode as its own title with Greene as creative director — what he called 'the final refinement' of the idea.
How it works
Battle royale began as a mod. Brendan Greene, known online as PlayerUnknown, built last-man-standing modes inside DayZ and ARMA 3, then worked on H1Z1: King of the Kill, refining a formula of 100 players, an open map and one survivor. In 2017 Korean developer Bluehole hired him to make the mode a standalone game, and PUBG: Battlegrounds entered Steam Early Access in late March 2017 with Greene as creative director.
The pitch was brutally simple: up to 100 players parachute onto a 64-square-kilometre island with nothing, scavenge vehicles, weapons and supplies, and fight inside a shrinking safe zone until one player or squad survives. There was no respawn and no tutorial — just the tension of one life per match. That session-based permadeath turned every match into a high-stakes story, and streams became the game's marketing engine, with more than 110,000 concurrent viewers on Twitch during beta.
The numbers followed the drama. PUBG sold two million copies within just over a month of Early Access, and by June 2018 it had passed 50 million copies on PC and Xbox. Epic Games shipped Fortnite: Battle Royale free-to-play that September, following PUBG's format to an even larger audience and turning battle royale into the industry's defining genre; Call of Duty, Apex Legends and Battlefield all added their own modes within two years.
Krafton, the holding company built around Bluehole, later reported 75 million PC and console copies of PUBG and more than one billion downloads of PUBG Mobile, and the studio went public in August 2021 in a 4.3-trillion-won (US$3.7 billion) IPO, one of the largest ever on the Korean exchange.
Why it lands
- The format was already battle-tested by thousands of players in mods; PUBG gave it a native engine instead of inventing an untried idea.
- One life per match created stakes no respawn shooter could match — death ended your story, so every decision mattered.
- Watching was as dramatic as playing: a shrinking map and 100 unknowns made the game a streaming spectacle that marketed itself.
- A Korean studio paired a global modder's rule set with serious production resources, funding and fast iteration, something no mod community could offer.
What it did
PUBG sold two million copies within just over a month of Early Access, then 50 million copies on PC and Xbox by June 2018. Epic shipped its free-to-play Fortnite: Battle Royale that September, carrying the mode into the industry's biggest genre; by 2021 Krafton reported 75 million PC and console copies and more than one billion mobile downloads.
What you can take
A proven format trapped inside a mod can be the best product insight: take a rule set players already love, give it a native home, and let the format itself — not advertising — carry the launch.
Since then
Fortnite: Battle Royale, free from September 2017, grew even larger and carried the genre to the mainstream, while PUBG stayed the realistic original. Its mobile version passed one billion downloads, and by July 2021 Krafton reported 75 million PC and console copies sold. That summer the company listed on the Korean exchange, raising 4.3 trillion won (US$3.7 billion) at a 24.3-trillion-won valuation, above NCSOFT and Netmarble. The battle royale rule set PUBG codified — drop, loot, survive — became the template for the industry's biggest shooters of the following decade.
Sources
- PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds hits early access
- PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds hits 2 million on Steam
- The history of Battle Royale: From mod to worldwide phenomenon
- Krafton to raise 4.3 tln won in IPO
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