Why the makers of PUBG and Call of Duty think the exploit shooter is the next big thing

stuffed inside report to investorspeople see plans PUBG: Battlefield publisher Krafton has freed itself from the battle royale market it helped create, but the market appears to be faltering, even for the Big Four (including the Big Four). top legend, fortress, And call of duty: Battlefield) dominate the space.

PUBG’s studio is working on an exploit shooter, a subgenre that looks like the way of the future, especially for first-person shooter developers. The game is so far called “Project Black,” South Korea-based Krafton told investors last week, and the launch is three-pronged — PC, console, and mobile. — being considered.

Krafton is “challenging itself to popularize the mining shooter genre,” the company said. Here’s the problem: It’s probably popular enough already, and Krafton is trying to cut a piece as big as possible Call of the task: Battlefieldsuccess with it DMZ mode is still in beta.

Mining shooters have been around in earnest since at least 2019, when Escape from Tarkov – then almost three years old – caught fire at the top of both Twitch and Steam’s charts. Their concept can also be found in modes like 2016’s Dark Zone Tom Clancy’s Separation and its 2019 sequel, as well as — naturally — DayZ. A mod of that game became PUBG: Battlefield.

But we’ve also seen an increase in the number of good indie mining shooters, or at least interesting early access attempts aimed at capturing the attention of shooter fans. That comes in a year-long period that is absolutely brutal for new ideas to pursue the battle royale or battle pass model, or both.

Biggest casualty:

• Rumbleverse: Iron Galaxy’s “Brawler royale” is a melee-based battle royale approach, and it lasted less than a year. The game, published by Epic Games, launches in August and will go offline on February 28. To be fair, both Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout And Naraka: Point of the Sword are melee combat royalty, and both still stand. Rumbleverse may have struggled to be a free-to-play game that featured battle pass just because Epic dominated the space with fortress, Missile Federationand, by the way, The fall boy.
• Legend of Apex Mobile: Electronic Arts on January 31 announced a startling face for the mobile adaptation of its battle royale. That game shut down in May, about a year after launch. top legend got into the good mobile space after fortress And PUBGand with Call of Duty: War ZoneMobile version of expected around this year, EA may have seen very little percentage in pursuing that vase.
• by Ubisoft Frontline ghost scout And Super imagestwo battle royale titles that attracted little attention (and equal player numbers) were dropped by the French publisher in July and April 2022, respectively. In hindsight, the Tom franchise Clancy is too late for the party to make any noise as battle royale can be something of a scare.

Other indications are that the shooter genre as a whole discards weaker ideas at a faster pace as much of its identity lies within a single genre governed by four titles:

• Battlefield 2042EA’s flagship shooter, possibly already a bunch of other problems — its first multiplayer season was delayed seven months before the game’s November 2021 launch. But it didn’t help that multiplayer either battlefield 2042 there’s also no battle royale to attract fans; Battlefield 5 introduced the battle royale title Firestorm in spring 2019.
• Furthermore, while a mobile version of Battlefield still not out, EA announced that they abandoned that project on the same day it boxed Legend of Apex Mobile.
• City knockout, Velan Studios’ attempt at creating a brighter and more user-friendly multiplayer shooter with a seasonal and battle-passing model, was TKO’d. It’s still playable, but will be closed on June 6, two years after its debut.
• CrossfireX, marketing many times is the western version of the most popular first-person shooter of all time in Asia, is another live service game that will be shutting down completely in May. That applies to the multiplayer component as well as the single-player campaign developed by Remedy Entertainment, both were not well received.

If mining shooters are where smart money goes, this is what Krafton will find when he gets there. In addition to the foregoing Escape from Tarkov And Call of Duty: War Zone‘s DMZ, these games have recently been successful with the format:

• Hunt: Showdown – The irony of irony, this exploit shooter could breathe new life into Crytek, the gold standard for FPS games a decade ago, and has been bogged down ever since. In this game, the player is passing a bayou on a quest to hunt down a monster boss. Killing it will scatter the loot, but then players who get it will be visible to all others in the game. Bottom line, someone is taking the goods out. Hunt: Showdown often in the top 50 most played games on Steam.
• Monday Extinction — This game is still in early access and also available in Xbox Game Preview. It is expected to launch in full this year. In this mining shooter, players fall into a world ravaged by “evil, mutant dinosaurs” and they are given a series of shifting objectives that they can complete or escape. by getting to the mining site early.
• Cycle: Border — From the back studio Special Activity: Line, this mining shooter launches in June 2022 after three years of early access. This is a free game available through both the Epic Games Store and Steam. Players are prospectors on the surface of an alien planet, attempting to exploit its riches while fending off dangerous and deadly threats, as do other players.
• Darker and Darker: This is not a shooter, in essence, but a fantasy theme, based on Ironmace’s melee, roguelike loot-and-leave definitely fits the bill of the multiplayer mining adventure set out so far. It just finished alpha testing on Steam, saw the number of players the peak is more than 100,000 on five of the seven days it is offered. Darker and Darker is expected to launch in the final quarter (October to December) of 2023, with console versions possible after Ironmace — another Korean studio — stops launching PCs.

With a subgenre familiar enough for shooter fans, but a table of mining genres barely established so far, whether the conditions are ripe for it to be the next foray, like like battle royale in 2017? This bear to see.