PlayerUnknown will let players mod Battlegrounds in search of 'the next PlayerUnknown'

Brendan "PlayerUnknown" Greene's Arma 3 mod has catapulted him to success, and now he wants to let people mod his game in the hope of finding "the next PlayerUnknown".

In an interview with Cnet, he said the team behind the sensation that is PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds were trying to find a way to allow the community to tweak the title without allowing piracy. 

"We have to do it carefully because because we're very protective of our server files," he said. "Allowing people to run their own dedicated servers would mean releasing the server files and that could lead to piracy. It's something we want to do, but it might take us a bit of time to actually implement it, because we really have to figure out the best way to do it so the game still stays secure."

The goal, ultimately, is to allow other players to created spin-off games the same way that he did with Arma 3. "I want to try to find someone who creates a game mode or a mod for my game that propels them to fame, and gets them to make their own game too. I want to find the next PlayerUnknown."

He also spoke about the future of Battlegrounds, which is still in Early Access ahead of a planned release later this year. He thinks of the title as a "service, not as a game", and says it could hang around for the next 10 years.

"Over the coming years, we're just going to keep upgrading and keep improving and keep adding to the game, much like what Counter-Strike: Global Offensive has done.

"We're not looking at this as a short term game, we're looking at this as something we want to do for the next 10 years."

Unfortunately, it sounds like the two new maps he's working on — one of which, a desert map, is seen above — won't actually be part of the game on release. Greene said he's going to post a blog soon to "temper expectations" on the new arenas.

"I'm not sure about the two new maps being ready, one of them may be... we're going to do a blog post about the current state of the new maps. 

"The images we released a few weeks ago, they were what we call a beautiful corner, where the artist spends a lot of time creating a small patch to give a sense of what the overall map looks like, and it gives a false impression that these maps are really far along. I'll be going into that a bit in my dev blog so we can temper people's expectations."

The full interview is here.

Samuel Horti

Samuel Horti is a long-time freelance writer for PC Gamer based in the UK, who loves RPGs and making long lists of games he'll never have time to play.