PUBG publisher Krafton has pulled the plug on its extraction shooter spin-off PUBG: Black Budget. Announced less than a year ago and already through several closed alpha tests, the publisher’s reasoning for the cancellation is simple: it believes Black Budget simply wasn’t fun enough to keep potential players engaged.
“After reviewing the project’s development status and future direction, we concluded that its current direction would not allow us to deliver an experience players could enjoy over the long term,” Krafton wrote in a Steam update. “We have therefore made the difficult decision to end development of PUBG: Black Budget. PUBG Studios will carry what we learned from development and testing into future projects, continuing to listen to players as we explore new gameplay experiences.”
Black Budget is the second PUBG spin-off to get the axe, following the demise of the tactical shooter PUBG: Blindspot in March. While the game launched in early access, Krafton closed it down after two months, saying it was “no longer able to sustainably provide the level of experience” it set out to deliver.
Krafton’s reasons for cancelling Black Budget aren’t without merit. If it had been fully released, Black Budget would likely have faced an uphill battle, as the extraction shooter genre is perceived as a niche market dominated by a handful of games, while the live-service video game graveyard is full of recent projects that failed to find an audience. Many games launch with strong momentum, but they struggle to retain those initial player numbers, and their audiences shrink quickly.
Just look at Highguard, as the free-to-play shooter lasted just over a month before it shut down. PUBG franchise director Taeseok Jang recently reflected on the struggles of Highguard and other live-service games, commenting on how hard it is to succeed in that space.
Krafton has another PUBG spin-off in the works, the grindhouse-themed multiplayer shooter Ded.Net. Announced back in August during Gamescom, it’s currently being developed by Krafton’s Wisconsin-based studio PUBG Madison.
