PlayerUnknown Productions, the game studio founded by the developer behind PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds, has just announced three exciting new projects. These include a free tech demo available on Steam, a survival game set to debut in early access next year, and the highly anticipated project that will serve as the culmination of all of PlayerUnknown Productions’ efforts.
Brendan Greene, also known as PlayerUnknown, is credited with creating the popular battle royale genre. His innovative mods for games like DayZ and Arma 3 laid the foundation for the genre, which gained widespread popularity with titles such as H1Z1 and, most notably, PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds. Since stepping away from PUBG in 2019 to establish PlayerUnknown Productions, Greene has been relatively quiet about the studio’s upcoming projects. However, the recent announcement sheds light on what the Amsterdam-based team has been working on.
During the PC Gaming Show, Greene revealed three distinct projects that PlayerUnknown Productions is currently developing, with hints of more to come. The journey begins with Preface: Undiscovered World, a free tech demo designed to showcase the capabilities of the Melba game engine, which will power all future titles from the studio.
In Greene’s words, “In Preface, users can explore an Earth-scale world generated in real-time by our machine learning agents directly on their GPU. While the digital planet may seem empty now, each user’s feedback will shape its future development.”
The insights gained from Preface: Undiscovered World will inform the development of Prologue: Go Wayback!, a single-player survival game that leverages machine learning for terrain generation and introduces players to unpredictable weather conditions as they navigate towards a weather station for help. Early access for Prologue: Go Wayback! is scheduled for the second quarter of 2025, with playtests preceding the release.
The ultimate objective of Preface: Undiscovered World, Prologue: Go Wayback!, and an undisclosed third project is to establish the technical groundwork for Project Artemis. This ambitious multiplayer sandbox game represents the pinnacle of PlayerUnknown Productions’ vision. While a release date for Project Artemis remains unspecified, fans can expect more frequent updates from the studio in the future.
