Brendan Greene, the creator and creator of PlayerUnknown’s Battleground, says in an interview that a final version of the game will be available within six months. The developer has also released images of the zombie mode.
Greene tells RockPaperShotgun that he can guarantee that the game will come out of Early Access within six or seven months. “It’s the team, it’s a matter of honor,” he says in the interview. Some similar games, such as H1Z1 and Dayz, have been in Early Access for a long time and are often criticized for it. Greene argues that PlayerUnknown’s Battleground development is easier because the game uses the Unreal engine.
The current early release has been one of the most popular games on Steam for the past few months. More than four million copies have already been sold. In June, developer Bluehole announced that the game will be getting a zombie mode. The studio has now made that mode available to a limited audience of YouTubers and streamers on Twitch. Jeff Grub, who writes for VentureBeat, has put zombie mode gameplay online.
Earlier this week, Bluehole also showed two for the first time on Twitter screenshots of a new folder. The new area is located in the desert and players may also be able to use bicycles. It is not yet known when the desert area will become playable. It is still a work in progress according to the studio. It is also not yet known when the zombie mode will be available to all users.
The game falls into the battle royale genre, combining the exploration and search of scarce materials with last man standing elements from multiplayer shooters. Creator Brendan Greene was also previously involved in the development of DayZ: Battle Royale, a mod for Arma 2. He was also involved in H1Z1: King of the Kill. Those survival games follow a similar concept.
In PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds, up to 100 players are parachuted onto an island, where they must find weapons and equipment as quickly as possible and stay alive. During a round, the playing field shrinks further, forcing the survivors to save themselves in a smaller and smaller area. The last surviving team or the last remaining player wins the round.
Update, Friday: The interview was held in April, but only now published. That would imply that the game will be out of Early Access as early as October. The developer posted a message on the game’s Steam page on Friday stating that this isn’t feasible, but that the game will likely be out of early phases before the end of this year.