PlayerUnknown Productions, the studio founded by Brendan “PlayerUnknown” Greene, is restructuring the team and halting development on Prologue: Go Wayback.
Announced via the game’s Steam page, the studio said it had to make a hard decision to “restructure our studio to a smaller team.” As “a result,” further development of Prologue: Go Wayback, which launched in early access in November of last year, will be halted.
“Our main priority at the moment is to support our employees during this difficult transition,” the studio wrote, without disclosing the exact number of staff affected or how they’re planning on supporting them.
The statement goes on to say that the studio hopes it can return to Go Wayback in the future. In the meantime, PlayerUnknown Productions is working on an update that will push the game out of early access and make it free-to-play.
For those who’ve purchased the game, the team is “investigating offering refunds” to customers.
“Please stand by for more information on this over the coming weeks, which we will communicate here on Steam and on our Discord,” concludes the statement.
Greene, who worked on PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds (PUBG) as lead designer and director, and helped to popularize the battle royale genre, split from parent company Krafton to form his new studio back in 2021.
Since then, Krafton has held a minority stake in the new venture. The first project was the ‘Prologue’ franchise. In a statement at the time, the studio said the following: “Together with a team of game developers and researchers, we explore new possibilities of interaction and connection within the game space.”
A year later, Greene spoke about Artemis, which would be the next project after Prologue, which turned out to be a tech demo of sorts named Prologue: Go Wayback. Artemis, in turn, would be a game that incorporated blockchain technology. “I was fascinated with this idea of digital spaces, places where there are no real rules but a set of systems that you can use,” said Green of Artemis at the time. “That fascinated me, and still does. I never considered just walking away.”
PUBG sold over 70 million copies worldwide by mid 2020. Krafton has continued working on the IP, albeit with uneven results. In late March of this year, the publisher shuttered the 5v5 top-down tactical shooter PUBG Blindspot after being in early access for less than two months.