'Player Unknown's Battlegrounds' Creator Talks About Chinese Market and Game's Future
A few months ago, "Player Unknown's Battlegrounds" developer Bluehole announced that it plans to partner with Chinese conglomerate Tencent to localize the game for the Chinese market. Now creator Brendan "Playerunknown" Greene talks about this new market as well as what's in store for the game after exiting Steam Early Access.
As of last month, Valve's digital game marketplace Steam is no-longer a majority English-speaking platform with over half its users reading and writing Chinese. Greene seems to be aware of the massive demographic shift and talked about just how big the Chinese market is.
"I didn't understand the scale of China when I first," Greene told Polygon. "You hear things like, 'Tencent's WeChat has a billion users.' A billion people use this single app in China. What the f***? The literal scale of the player base in China is crazy. It kind of blew me away."
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But while Greene might be happy about the Chinese community, the "Player Unknown's Battlegrounds" community in the West seems to be having trouble accepting Chinese players. Troubling news of racial slurs with calls for Chinese players be booted to their own dedicated servers began spreading on social media.
Greene expressed his disappointment saying that xenophobia has no place in the game. With regards to creating a dedicated Chinese server, he responded that they want to create "a great space for everyone to enjoy across the globe" and locking one region out is just unthinkable.
But racial slurs aren't the only worrying aspect of the game's spread to China as it was reported that the majority of cheats used in-game come from the country. Greene also acknowledged this fact saying that while there's always been a massive cheat market all over the world, their use seems to be much more acceptable in China.
"Player Unknown's Battlegrounds" recently released its 1.0 update officially ending its Early Access stint. The game was also launched on the Xbox One earlier this month sparking demands for cross-platform play which, according to Greene, is something they are considering.
