Krafton pulls the plug on another PUBG game, Black Budget, less than a year after it was announced
Krafton announced the cancellation of PUBG: Black Budget, an extraction shooter spin-off, less than a year after its initial announcement. The publisher made the decision public via a Steam update following an internal review of the project’s development status and trajectory.
According to Krafton’s statement, the core issue was that Black Budget’s current direction would not support long-term player engagement. “After reviewing the project’s development status and future direction, we concluded that its current direction would not allow us to deliver an experience players could enjoy over the long term,” the publisher explained.
Despite progressing through multiple closed alpha tests, the project failed to meet Krafton’s quality and engagement benchmarks. This cancellation adds Black Budget to the growing list of live-service games that have been terminated during development or shortly after launch.
Rather than treating the development effort as a total loss, Krafton indicated it would extract lessons from Black Budget’s development cycle and testing phases. The publisher stated that PUBG Studios would apply these learnings to future projects while maintaining its commitment to listening to player feedback when developing new gaming experiences.