PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds (PUBG) is an online multiplayer battle royale game developed and published by PUBG Corporation, a subsidiary of South Korean video game company Bluehole. The game is based on previous mods that were created by Brendan “PlayerUnknown” Greene for other games, inspired by the 2000 Japanese film Battle Royale, and expanded into a standalone game under Greene’s creative direction.

In the game, up to one hundred players parachute onto an island and scavenge for weapons and equipment to kill others while avoiding getting killed themselves. The available safe area of the game’s map decreases in size over time, directing surviving players into tighter areas to force encounters. The last player or team standing wins the round.

Battlegrounds was first released for Microsoft Windows via Steam’s early access beta program in March 2017, with a full release in December 2017. The game was also released by Microsoft Studios for the Xbox One via its Xbox Game Preview program that same month, and officially released in September 2018. A free-to-play mobile version for Android and iOS was released in 2018, in addition to a port for the PlayStation 4. A version for the Stadia streaming platform was released in April 2020. Battlegrounds is one of the best-selling and most-played video games of all time. By 2019, the PC and console versions of the game have sold over 60 million copies, in addition to PUBG Mobile having crossed 600 million downloads.

Mobile versions

Following the Chinese publication deal for the Windows version, Tencent Games and PUBG Corporation additionally announced that they were planning on releasing two mobile versions based on the game in the country.^[85][86] The first, PUBG: Exhilarating Battlefield, is an abridged version of the original game, and was developed by LightSpeed & Quantum Studio, an internal division of Tencent Games.^[87] The second, PUBG: Army Attack, includes more arcade-style elements, including action taking place on warships, and was developed by Tencent’s Timi Studio.^[88] Both versions are free-to-play, and were released for Android and iOS devices on February 9, 2018.^[89][90] The games had a combined total of 75 million pre-registrations, and ranked first and second on the Chinese iOS download charts at launch.^[90] Following a soft launch in Canada, an English version of Exhilarating Battlefield, localized simply as PUBG Mobile, was released worldwide on March 19, 2018.