PUBG is now so much more than the battle royale mode it once pioneered. As well as the classic 100-player battlegrounds, the Krafton-owned megahit has aspirations in the extraction shooter space with Black Budget, as well as the more console-friendly Project Valor, both in development. But soon, boot up Battlegrounds itself, and you’ll find the developer’s latest addition to that collection, the sci-fi co-op PvE roguelike Xeno Point. It’s perhaps the most extreme example of the now nine-year-old game transitioning into a platform – one clearly designed to rival the success of its battle royale competitor from the other side of the world, Fortnite. Epic’s globe-conquering shooter has long integrated different gameplay experiences into its last-player-standing fabric, including a collaboration with the playful Lego, the musical Festival, and thousands of player-created modes. And now, PUBG Studios is aiming to build the foundations of a similar ecosystem, kicking things off with Xeno Point, which I recently played when visiting the developer in Seoul.
From spending a few days in South Korea around the ninth anniversary of PUBG, it’s clear just how big a deal it is there. Whereas Fortnite may dominate the cultural mindshare in Europe and the US, Battlegrounds still remains the king in this part of Asia. A well-attended event at Korea University’s Hwajeong Gymnasium played host to developer panels, extravagant magic shows, and K-Pop performances. In the trendy Seongsu district of the capital sits a dedicated cultural space designed for players to take a slice of the battle royale into the real world. A themed cafe and e-sports like arena to play the game in sit behind a skate park littered with PUBG iconography, such as guns from the game’s collab with K-Pop girl group Aespa, taking things to the next level. It’s clear from talking to the team at PUBG Studios that the shooter is much more than a game here, but a part of the culture. You’d struggle to find one single game celebrated to such a degree in any other country.
It’s something that they’d love to replicate on the Western side of the globe. Yes, PUBG Battlegrounds is no great underdog — it still sat inside the 12 most played games on Steam in 2025 — but the studio wants more. And to do so, it has to change significantly. There’s no denying that while Fortnite has evolved both visually and mechanically over the past decade or so, Battlegrounds has remained largely unchanged, hesitating to embrace event-driven seasons and pop-culture collaborations to quite the same extent. To some, it’s still the purest battle royale, and one that comes with a delightful layer of jank to it, even if its current incarnation is refined compared to its 2017 beginnings. But rather than stick with these core ideas, or perhaps even offer a “classic” version of the game as it did temporarily a couple of years ago, the studio is going in a different direction.
From speaking with the developers in Seoul, it’s clear that the Fortnite model is where they see the future of PUBG, with more experimental, timed modes being lined up. That’s not to say that refinements for Battlegrounds aren’t also on their way, with an overhaul of how it plays on consoles promised, including improved controller support and 120 fps, but there are much bigger, wider-scope things to come. During a presentation given by Taeseok Jang, Head of the PUBG IP Franchise Group, he admits that “PUBG is no longer viewed [internally] as a single game” and instead as a “long-term franchise with the goal of becoming a global cultural icon.” The first step towards doing this? “Including high-quality modes developed in collaboration with external studios, as well as ongoing experimentation with user-generated content.”
One of these collabs is the upcoming Payday mode, which, quite literally, appears to be placing Starbreeze’s heist-shooter action into PUBG with assistance from the Swedish studio. It’s set to arrive in May, but before that, on April 8, comes Xeno Point, a sci-fi roguelite made entirely inside of PUBG Studios’ walls. I got to try out this co-op PvE shooter mode when visiting, and, while it didn’t blow me away, it did provide an insight into where the future of the platform is headed.
Several missions exist inside of Xeno Point, all of which largely involve gunning down waves of alien invaders as you move from point to point through linear levels, each of which is drawn from a warped version of Battlegrounds’ Miramar map. Before heading out on each expedition, you’ll get to load up with familiar PUBG weaponry and items, such as AUGs and pills, and then equip yourself with destructive ultimate abilities that operate on a cooldown. I particularly enjoyed sending a swarm of detonating insects towards enemies and watching them explode. You’ll get the chance to unlock permanent upgrades and stat boosts for your character after each run, too, giving a sense of progression through each of its ten or so levels.
It all culminates in a phase-based boss fight in which you’ll be tasked with hammering bullets into glowing weak points on a giant alien being while dodging all manner of red-tinged projectiles. This is where the co-op nature of Xeno Point comes to the fore as you coordinate with teammates to use your ultimate abilities in conjunction with one another. For example, summoning a giant protective shield that you and your three teammates can shelter under while you frantically scramble to revive a downed friend inside of it.
For this demonstration, we were dropped in with high-level gear and took on the mode’s toughest boss nearly instantly, so it was hard to get a real grasp of what the full experience will ultimately feel like, but from my time with Xeno Point, it seems a perfectly serviceable shooter mode that will act as a change of pace from Battleground’s core tension-filled action, even if I did find its damage sponge threats a little dull compared to the excitement found in its last-player-standing staple.
It’s that original battle royale drama that has kept fans coming back to PUBG for over nine years now, though, so I do question whether this foray into experimenting with more arcadey modes is the way forward. The goal may be to rebuild “connections in Western markets and younger audiences”, as the director of PUBG: Battlegrounds, Taehyun Kim, states, but I’m not sure if a routine feeling sci-fi roguelite and the introduction of Payday — a series whose third release recently fell way short of expectations — is the way to do that.
Instead, continuing to refine the 1vs99 magic that it led the way with could be the wiser play here, and certainly tweaking the console experience with the aforementioned improvements is a sign that this will be happening alongside these more experimental modes. But I can’t help but feel that PUBG players come to the game for its signature moments of tension, and more ‘rough-and-ready’ feeling gunplay that it has provided since 2017. A full, permanent classic mode may well be the answer for those who yearn for those early days when an Irish modder took inspiration from a 2000 Japanese film to pioneer a shooter genre within Day Z.
Doubling down on what made millions of players fall in love with the original battle royale and emphasising those fundamentally exciting roots may be the smarter choice, rather than chasing the platform that Fortnite has become.
Simon Cardy is a Senior Editor at IGN who can mainly be found skulking around open world games, indulging in Korean cinema, or despairing at the state of Tottenham Hotspur and the New York Jets. Follow him on Bluesky at @cardy.bsky.social.
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