50 Fun Facts About PUBG: Battlegrounds

Up to how many players parachute onto the map at the start of a standard PUBG match?

Players can drop solo, in duos or in squads of up to four, and the last player or team alive wins.

What phrase is shown to the last player or team standing at the end of a PUBG match?

Greene had used the idiom in his earlier mods; its origins go back at least to the Great Depression.

What is the online handle of Brendan Greene, the game's creator?

The game was originally titled PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds and quietly rebranded around July 2021.

Greene's earliest mod efforts drew on which book series before he moved away to avoid copyright issues?

Players were to fight over a central weapons stockpile; he spread the loot around instead to give players a better chance of survival.

What was the name of the first map, an island with Soviet-style brutalist buildings?

Greene thought it felt disjointed despite meeting its gameplay goals; Game Informer still named it the best map of 2017.

After being spun out as its own company in 2017, the game's studio opened its first overseas office where?

Offices in Europe and Japan were planned next, and Greene later relocated to a special-projects studio in Amsterdam.

Greene's earliest battle royale mod was built on which game?

The mod was an offshoot of DayZ; when DayZ went standalone he moved to ARMA 3.

In which country was Greene a photographer when he made his first battle royale mod?

He learned programming as he went while tinkering with a custom DayZ server.

Why are PUBG's safe zones circular rather than the squares Greene originally wanted?

The Japanese film that inspired him used square zones; the circle stuck all the way to Battlegrounds.

Before PUBG, Greene consulted for Sony Online Entertainment on the battle royale mode of which game?

Sony split it into Just Survive and King of the Kill in February 2016, around the time his consultancy ended.

Which South Korean company hired Greene as creative director to build PUBG?

Chang-han Kim of Bluehole Ginno Games sought him out; Greene says he was the first foreigner hired as a creative director by a Korean studio.

PUBG was built on which off-the-shelf technology, allowing faster development than ARMA's or H1Z1's?

Greene admitted the engine was not designed with such large maps in mind.

Who composed PUBG's main musical theme, an 'orchestral electronic hybrid' chosen personally by Greene?

Antti Martikainen wrote the music for the sixth anniversary.

PUBG launched in Steam early access in which month and year?

It left early access on 20 December 2017 after the planned six months stretched to nine.

Which anti-cheat software does PUBG use, having permanently banned tens of millions of accounts?

The company said 99 per cent of all cheating software for the game was developed in China.

What does the game drop when a player fires a flare gun?

Care packages emit red smoke that draws other players and creates confrontations.

Random red-highlighted regions of the map are periodically subjected to what?

Greene later argued that clones copying the red-zone bombing runs and parachute drop should not be allowed to lift such specific mechanics.

On which console did PUBG launch as a timed exclusive in December 2017 via a Game Preview programme?

Microsoft dropped real supply crates full of Xbox hardware across Australia the week before to promote it.

Which Spanish developer handled most of the early Xbox One porting work?

Microsoft's The Coalition and its advanced technology group later pitched in, and Rare shared water-rendering tech from Sea of Thieves.

The PlayStation 4 version included which exclusive cosmetic from Uncharted?

Ellie's backpack from The Last of Us was also included; Jordan Vogt-Roberts directed a live-action promo.

PUBG became free to play on all platforms in which month?

Existing owners were upgraded free to the paid Battleground Plus tier, which unlocks ranked mode and custom servers.

Which Chinese company publishes PUBG in China and developed PUBG Mobile?

Its LightSpeed & Quantum Studio built the abridged mobile version, first released in China as Exhilarating Battlefield.

Under what title was PUBG Mobile re-released in China in 2019 to satisfy content rules?

Blood and gore were removed; it was renamed again to Peacekeeper Elite in 2020.

After the 2020 Indian ban, the publisher relaunched the smartphone game there in 2021 under what name?

India had been the mobile game's largest market, with 175 million downloads and 24 per cent of global users.

Which Indian state banned PUBG in March 2019 as an addictive distraction during exam season?

Students caught playing were arrested; Nepal, Iraq, Jordan and Aceh followed with bans of their own that year.

PUBG Corporation sued which company in January 2018 over Fortnite Battle Royale?

Awkwardly, Epic also supplied PUBG's engine; the suit was dropped in June 2018 for undisclosed reasons.

PUBG's lawsuit against NetEase targeted which two mobile games?

PUBG pointed to chicken references and cookware used as armour as evidence; the two settled by March 2019.

Chinese clones of PUBG are grouped under what genre nickname?

The name comes from the game's victory message.

How many Guinness World Records did PUBG collect on Steam while still in early access?

They included the first non-Valve game to be the most played on Steam and the first game to hit 2 million concurrent Steam players.

PUBG's peak concurrent Steam player count reached what figure, a record at the time?

It was the first game ever to pass 2 million concurrent players on Steam, having already overtaken Dota 2's record in September 2017.

Which long-reigning title did PUBG overtake in August 2017 to become the most played game on Steam?

It was the first time a game not published by Valve had topped the chart since Steam launched in 2003.

PUBG made how much in the first three days of its Windows early access release?

It hit a million copies in 16 days, faster than Minecraft managed during its paid beta.

Across PC and console, PUBG has sold more than how many copies?

That makes it the second-best-selling PC game ever and the best-selling game on Xbox One.

Combined with the mobile version, PUBG had earned roughly how much revenue by the third quarter of 2022?

Mobile accounted for about $9 billion of the total and PC/console about $4 billion.

Which Star Trek actor starred in the live-action documentaries about the Battlegrounds' origins released from 2020?

A later short, 'Ground Zero', starred Ma Dong-seok ahead of the Taego map.

Which horror game, set in the PUBG universe on a Jupiter moon, came from the Striking Distance studio?

Glen Schofield, who led the original Dead Space, headed the studio.

PUBG: New State, the mobile spin-off later renamed New State Mobile, is set in which year?

It launched for iOS and Android in November 2021 and is based on future warfare.

Who replaced Greene as PUBG's lead designer when he stepped back in March 2019?

Greene moved to PUBG Special Projects in Amsterdam, closer to family in Ireland, to try something new outside the genre.

Support for the Xbox One and PS4 versions of PUBG ended on which date?

Native Xbox Series X/S and PlayStation 5 versions were announced at the same time, running at up to 4K.

At The Game Awards 2017, PUBG won which category while still in early access?

Its Game of the Year nomination sparked debate as the first for an early-access title.

Greene's last-player-standing mods, and PUBG itself, drew on which 2000 Japanese film?

Kinji Fukasaku's film of a class forced to fight to the death also gave the whole genre its name.

On average, a full PUBG round takes no more than how many minutes?

The shrinking safe zone keeps matches short, with stragglers outside the blue wall taking damage until they move in.

To hype the console Game Preview launch, Microsoft air-dropped crates in which country?

The crates held Xbox hardware and merchandise, with passcodes and drop locations posted on social media the week before launch.

PUBG Lite, the free low-spec version, first launched in beta in which country in 2019?

It was aimed at regions where average PCs struggled to meet the full game's minimum specs, and reached Europe that October.

PUBG Mobile's English version was soft-launched in which country before going worldwide?

The worldwide release followed on March 19, 2018, as a localised version of the Chinese game Exhilarating Battlefield.

Under what subtitle did PUBG arrive on Google's Stadia streaming service in April 2020?

It was free to Stadia's paying subscribers at launch, a little over two years before Google shut the service down.

PUBG's Guinness record for fastest Early Access game to a million sales: how many days?

A second record followed for grossing $100 million in just 79 days of early access.

Which Dead Space creator led Striking Distance, the studio Krafton founded in 2019?

Schofield's studio went on to make The Callisto Protocol, a far-future horror game set in the same universe on a prison colony; he left the studio in 2023.

Which country's telecom regulator banned PUBG in July 2020, then relented a month later?

The regulator called the game addictive and a waste of time, but relented after meeting the publisher's legal representatives.

In July 2021, Krafton partnered with which producer to develop an animated PUBG series?

Shankar is best known for producing Netflix's animated Castlevania adaptation.