91 Fun Facts About PUBG: Battlegrounds

Up to how many players parachute onto the island at the start of a standard PUBG match?

100. Everyone lands unarmed, so the opening minutes are a scramble for weapons scattered at random across the map.

What phrase is shown to the last player or team standing at the end of a PUBG match?

Winner winner chicken dinner. In China, the line led players to nickname PUBG and its clones 'chicken-eating games'.

What online handle does PUBG creator Brendan Greene go by?

PlayerUnknown. Greene backed mod support for PUBG, saying he wanted to 'find the next PlayerUnknown' among its players.

Greene's earliest mod efforts drew on which book series before he moved away to avoid copyright issues?

The Hunger Games. Greene was also inspired by a DayZ streamer tournament he couldn't join, so he set out to build a mode anyone could play.

What was PUBG's first map, an island dotted with Soviet-style brutalist buildings?

Erangel. Greene chose an island because island maps had worked best in his mods.

Which kitchen item doubles as a melee weapon and a piece of armour in PUBG?

Frying pan. PUBG Corp's 2018 lawsuit against NetEase listed cookware used as a weapon or armour among the features rivals had copied.

Greene's earliest battle royale mod was built on which game?

ARMA 2. His DayZ: Battle Royale mod grew out of the open-world mod DayZ, and when DayZ went standalone he rebuilt the mode for ARMA 3.

PUBG creator Brendan Greene was a photographer in which country when he made his first battle royale mod?

Brazil. Greene had barely played games there until he found the DayZ mod and taught himself scripting on his own server.

Why are PUBG's safe zones circular rather than the squares Greene originally wanted?

His inexperience at coding. Greene wanted square zones like those in the film Battle Royale but couldn't program them, so he used a circle.

Before PUBG, Greene consulted for Sony Online Entertainment on the battle royale mode of which game?

H1Z1. Sony licensed his battle royale mode as an official H1Z1 game mode and brought Greene on as a consultant.

Which South Korean company hired Greene as creative director to build PUBG?

Bluehole. Greene says it was the first time a Korean studio had hired a foreigner as creative director, and he moved to Seoul to lead the team.

Which game engine was PUBG built on?

Unreal Engine 4. Greene said its big engine team made building far easier than on in-house engines, though maps this large needed heavy engine changes.

What was PUBG Corporation's 2018 campaign to squash bugs and speed up the game called?

Fix PUBG. The studio openly admitted the game was broken, then declared the campaign a success three months later once all 100 listed fixes had shipped.

Which country is PUBG creator Brendan Greene from?

Ireland. After moving back home, he lived on social welfare while running his battle royale mods, which earned him nothing.

Which anti-cheat service policed PUBG's servers in 2017?

BattlEye. It blamed most cheating on China, fuelling calls for region locks that Greene said just don't work, though a 2018 update began matching players by region.

What does a plane drop when a PUBG player fires a flare gun inside the safe zone?

A supply package with rare loot. Fired outside the safe zone, the same flare calls in an armoured vehicle instead.

In PUBG, what happens inside the red zones that appear on the map during a match?

Bombing. Players get a few minutes' warning, and anyone who can't get out of the red zone can shelter inside a building.

On which console did PUBG launch as a timed exclusive in December 2017?

Xbox One. Microsoft's Gears of War studio, The Coalition, helped PUBG's team build the Xbox port.

PUBG's PlayStation 4 version included which exclusive Uncharted cosmetic?

Nathan Drake's outfit. To mark the PS4 launch, Kong: Skull Island director Jordan Vogt-Roberts made a live-action PUBG short film.

In January 2022, PUBG switched to which business model?

Free to play. Anyone who had already bought the game was automatically upgraded to the paid Battlegrounds Plus tier, which unlocks ranked matches.

Which Chinese company won the rights to publish PUBG in China and developed PUBG Mobile?

Tencent. It released two official PUBG phone games in China, one close to the PC game and one arcade-style with naval battles.

Under what title was PUBG Mobile re-released in China in 2019 to satisfy content rules?

Game for Peace. Unable to win government approval to sell in-game items for over a year, the publisher pulled PUBG Mobile.

After India banned PUBG's phone version in 2020, Krafton relaunched it there in 2021 under what name?

Battlegrounds Mobile India. The government blocked it too in 2022, and it returned to Indian phones in May 2023.

Which Indian state banned PUBG in March 2019 as an addictive distraction during exam season?

Gujarat. Police there arrested students who were caught playing the game.

PUBG Corporation sued the maker of which game over a battle royale mode released in September 2017?

Fortnite. PUBG's makers said they claimed no ownership of battle royale, then dropped the suit in June 2018 without saying why.

PUBG's lawsuit against NetEase targeted which two mobile games?

Rules of Survival and Knives Out. NetEase denied infringing PUBG's copyright when PUBG Corp complained to Apple about the games, and the two settled by March 2019.

Which mode did PUBG's developers announce in 2017 after streamers' custom games caught on?

Zombie mode. In those matches, every player but one four-person squad played the undead, armed only with melee weapons.

In October 2017, PUBG passed which game as the most played in South Korea's internet cafés?

League of Legends. Overwatch had briefly led it there in 2016, only to fall back behind the long-running MOBA.

What reason did India's government give for banning PUBG Mobile in 2020?

Data security. The game's South Korean owner responded by taking over its publishing in India.

Which long-reigning title did PUBG overtake in August 2017 to become the most played game on Steam?

Dota 2. Months earlier, some industry veterans on PUBG's own team had predicted just 200,000 to 300,000 sales in the game's first year.

Which Star Trek actor starred in PUBG's live-action documentaries about the origins of the Battlegrounds?

Jonathan Frakes. Krafton made the series to flesh out PUBG's backstory as it expanded the game's universe.

Which survival horror game began in the PUBG universe before dropping the link in 2022?

The Callisto Protocol. Creator Glen Schofield left his studio in 2023 after the game's sales disappointed.

When Brendan Greene stepped back from PUBG in 2019, which city did he move to for a new division?

Amsterdam. After two years on the road at conventions and events, Greene said he missed having a place to call home.

At The Game Awards 2017, PUBG won which category while still in early access?

Best Multiplayer. It was never announced during the broadcast, and host Geoff Keighley confirmed the winner the next day, calling it an oversight.

The 2000 Japanese film that inspired PUBG forces which group to fight to the death?

A class of schoolkids. Greene named his first mod, DayZ: Battle Royale, after the film, liking that it pitted everyone against everyone.

What keeps a standard PUBG match to about 30 minutes or less?

A shrinking play zone. A blue wall closes in every few minutes, and anyone caught outside it takes steady damage until they move inside.

PUBG's 'Pioneer Edition' was released in April 2020 on which cloud gaming service?

Stadia. Google shut the whole service down in January 2023, less than three years after PUBG arrived there.

How long did PUBG take to sell its first million copies in early access?

16 days. Greene had pitched it as 'a million month one, easy', and it beat even that boast.

Which studio did Krafton launch in 2019 under Dead Space creator Glen Schofield?

Striking Distance. Schofield had co-founded Activision's Sledgehammer Games, then left Activision in late 2018 before starting it.

Which country's telecom regulator banned PUBG in July 2020, then relented a month later?

Pakistan. The regulator lifted the ban after the publisher's legal representatives briefed it on controls to prevent misuse.

Which Castlevania producer did Krafton partner with in 2021 to develop an animated PUBG series?

Adi Shankar. Krafton said the deal was part of a push to expand PUBG beyond the game into a multimedia franchise.

PUBG's original energy drink can imitated the colours and shape of which real-world brand?

Red Bull was the obvious model: the in-game can copied its look under the spoof name Hot Bull, until a later update swapped in a new design.

PUBG's Dacia sedan was included as a nod to Brendan Greene's fondness for which British car show?

Top Gear turned Dacia-branded cars into a running gag, so the humble Romanian sedan earned a place among PUBG's vehicles.

Which Hollywood director hailed Battle Royale, the film behind PUBG, as a favourite of the previous two decades?

Quentin Tarantino singled it out in 2009, and the film's cult following abroad kept growing even though it had no United States distributor for a decade.

PUBG's console partnership with Microsoft let its developers borrow rendering techniques from which Rare game?

Sea of Thieves supplied its water: Rare shared the rendering techniques it had built for its pirate adventure with PUBG's team.

PUBG reached four million sales faster than which blockbuster, which needed over a year in paid beta?

Minecraft took more than a year to hit that figure, while PUBG passed five million copies within three months of going on sale.

Krafton, the publisher of PUBG, bought the studio behind which underwater survival game in October 2021?

Subnautica maker Unknown Worlds had started out as the team behind Natural Selection, a free mod for Half-Life.

A Guinness record names PUBG the first game from outside which company to top Steam's most-played chart?

Valve makes Steam, and the record was awarded when PUBG briefly topped the platform's chart with more than 800,000 people playing at once.

PUBG's PlayStation 4 version offered an exclusive backpack belonging to Ellie from which Sony game?

The Last of Us lent Ellie's backpack as a console-exclusive cosmetic when PUBG reached PlayStation 4 in December 2018.

PUBG's parent company took a new name in 2018 as a nod to which medieval institutions?

Craft guilds of the Middle Ages inspired the name Krafton, adopted in November 2018 for the holding company that gathers its game studios.

Which PUBG desert map, described as a haven for snipers, features ziplines and sandstorms?

Miramar has its own lore: a television producer won the land back from a cartel by hosting a death race, then turned it into a Battleground.

Which PUBG map pits players against blizzards on snowy fields, with snowmobiles and a train among its features?

Vikendi was reborn, in the game's story, after a bigger and bitter winter brought on by rapid climate change, and it can also be played in a night mode.

Which bolt-action PUBG rifle, based on a 1935 German army design, can kill through a level 2 helmet?

Kar98k rifles are prized because they lie around as ordinary loot, sparing players a risky trip to an airdrop for the even deadlier AWM.

Which PUBG submachine gun, nicknamed the Chicago Typewriter, became infamous during America's Prohibition era?

Tommy Gun is the popular name for the Thompson, invented in 1918; in PUBG it was once an airdrop-only prize before becoming ordinary ground loot.

Which outfit, found only in PUBG's airdrops, even hides the shape of a player's backpack?

Ghillie suit variants come in woodland green, desert khaki and arctic white, so the disguise matches whichever map it drops on.

Which rare PUBG healing item restores a player to full health after an eight-second use?

Med Kit is the only consumable that instantly refills all health, but the long cast time leaves its user a sitting duck in a firefight.

Which two-seat PUBG aircraft lets a passenger fire any weapon from the back seat?

Motor Glider pilots burn fuel faster the harder they throttle, and although there is no altitude cap, the engine loses power the higher it climbs.

PUBG's first invitational tournament, with a $350,000 prize pool, was held in August 2017 at which trade fair?

Gamescom hosted separate solo, duo and squad events, and special crates sold during the tournament fed its prize pool.

The PUBG Global Invitational 2018, one of the game's first global championships, was held in which European city?

Berlin welcomed twenty teams, who played separate third-person and first-person competitions with a prize pool of $1 million each.

Which slow three-wheeled auto rickshaw is the signature vehicle exclusive to PUBG's jungle map Sanhok?

Tukshai rickshaws replaced the usual UAZ, Dacia and minibus on the island, and arrived late because three-wheeled handling took extra fine tuning.

Which natural hazard faces players on PUBG's Paramo map, where the terrain shifts from match to match?

An active volcano oozes molten lava across Paramo, and the lore adds a lab rumoured to be experimenting on a strange flower from the stars.

In PUBG lore, which disaster bankrupted the city of Deston, leaving flooded sprawl and overgrown algae farms?

A hurricane left Deston to rot; what remains are hulking desalination plants and drowned streets that players can cross by airboat.

Which hazard, introduced on PUBG's 2x2 Karakin map, demolishes buildings and changes the layout every match?

Black Zone strikes meant the artists had to build a demolished version of every Karakin building, so shelter can vanish in the middle of a match.

On PUBG's Karakin map, which throwable blows open walls to reach hidden smuggler tunnels?

Sticky Bomb charges breach the bunker walls, though not every bunker leads to a tunnel and not all of the tunnels connect to each other.

Which PUBG map, stretching from reed fields to Ho San Prison, lists the Self AED and K2 rifle among its features?

Taego arrived in July 2021 with a lore twist: viral footage of a prison riot there is said to have inspired the creation of the Battlegrounds.

Which 8x8 PUBG map pairs bamboo groves and a serene lake with locations such as Jadena City?

Rondo fuses traditional aesthetics with modern sights, and its landmarks include a stadium, a test track and the NEOX Factory.

Which airdrop-only PUBG assault rifle, essentially a bullpup AKM, has a name that translates as thunderstorm?

Groza pairs hard-hitting 7.62mm rounds with a blistering rate of fire, though a three-second reload from empty is its one major drawback.

Which PUBG sniper weapon has a built-in suppressor and scope but fires weak, subsonic 9mm rounds?

VSS shots are so quiet that the shooter is extremely difficult to locate, but the slow bullets make distant or moving targets hard to hit.

PUBG's Mirado, the fast muscle car found only on its desert map, is based on which American classic?

Ford Mustang styling, specifically the first-generation Mach 1, shapes the Mirado, the quickest way down a highway at up to 152 km/h.

Which Microsoft studio, the makers of Gears of War 4, lent time and support to PUBG's first console port?

The Coalition pitched in as part of what Microsoft called a white glove treatment, which also drew on its advanced technology group.

The director of which 2017 monster film made the live-action short promoting PUBG's PlayStation 4 launch?

Kong: Skull Island director Jordan Vogt-Roberts, a vocal fan of video games, shot the short with actor Jason Mitchell in the lead.

When PUBG launched in its home country of South Korea, which company marketed and distributed the game there?

Kakao Games handled the home market, an arrangement separate from the publishing deal that later took the game into China.

Which Czech developer supported PUBG's team with motion capture animations from its Prague studio?

Bohemia Interactive made the military simulations that Greene first modded, and he credits the company for its help with PUBG's animations.

Which annual ceremony named PUBG its PC Game of the Year about a month before the game's full release?

Golden Joystick Awards judges also nominated PUBG for Ultimate Game of the Year and its makers for Studio of the Year.

Which country's Supreme Court swiftly lifted an April 2019 ban on PUBG, citing personal freedoms?

Nepal had banned the game as harmful to children and teenagers, but its judges ruled the government had not demonstrated why a ban was necessary.

Before PUBG, its South Korean parent studio had made which online role-playing game, launched at home in 2011?

TERA is short for The Exiled Realm of Arborea, and it reached North America and Europe more than a year after its South Korean debut.

Brendan Greene's post-PUBG studio planned a trilogy whose finale shares its name with which Greek goddess?

Artemis is intended to host millions of players in large-scale worlds; the trilogy's first part, a tech demo called Preface, reached Steam in December 2024.

Which Train to Busan star headlined Ground Zero, the 2021 live-action short set in the PUBG universe?

Ma Dong-seok, known abroad as Don Lee, made his Hollywood debut that same year in the Marvel film Eternals.

Which esports organisation won a title at the PUBG Global Invitational 2018 and then the 2019 Global Championship?

Gen.G entered PUBG with two separate squads under its old name KSV, then merged them into a single roster in August 2018.

In July 2017, PUBG's makers struck a deal to provide exclusive streaming content to which social media platform?

Facebook was pushing to offer its users more gaming content, although Twitch streamers were the ones credited with PUBG's fast early growth.

Which Shenzhen-based studio co-developed PUBG Mobile?

LightSpeed Studios, then called LightSpeed & Quantum, finished PUBG Mobile in just four months with help from teams around the world.

PUBG's snow map, planned with snow-covered Yugoslavian territories, sits on a fictional island in which sea?

Adriatic Sea was the setting in the plans revealed in 2017, which pictured Mediterranean coasts to the south and snowy mountains at the island's centre.

In PUBG lore, which sole survivor of a massacre on the game's first island became the godfather of the Battlegrounds?

Sergei Kalimnick was born on that island, and the lore says viral footage of a prison riot later inspired him to create the Battlegrounds.

Which composer, hand-picked by Brendan Greene, wrote PUBG's orchestral and electronic main theme?

Tom Salta was asked for a hybrid theme with a huge build-up, written to keep players determined right up until a match starts.

What is the name of the futuristic 8x8 island, set in the northern United States, in PUBG: New State?

Troi adds drones, ballistic shields and gliders to the fight, and players there can even recruit downed enemies.

Which Ginno Games founder recruited Brendan Greene and went on to lead both PUBG Corporation and Krafton as CEO?

Kim Chang-han had been forced to lay off a third of his staff around 2014, before he sold his studio and bet it on battle royale.

What was the codename of PUBG's jungle map Sanhok during its four rounds of testing in 2018?

Savage was tested on a separate Experimental Server client, invite-only at first until an uproar opened it to everyone who owned the game on Steam.

PUBG's dense urban map Haven introduced which hostile faction that tracks players with a scout helicopter?

Pillar also guards the map's locked caches: players must defeat its commanders to win the keys that open them.

PUBG's Dacia 1300 is modelled on a Romanian-built, licensed version of which French carmaker's saloon?

Renault licensed its 12 model to Romania, where it was sold as the Dacia 1300; in PUBG the car beats the UAZ for top speed but handles poorly off-road.

PUBG: New State's first season began a collaboration with which European hypercar maker?

Rimac came first, and later tie-ins brought McLaren, Among Us and Dead by Daylight into the mobile shooter during 2022.

Which top-down tactical PUBG spin-off entered Steam early access in February 2026 and shut down within two months?

Blindspot swapped the series' usual battle royale for tactical shooting seen from above, but it closed less than two months after its debut.