“I don’t want to encourage gambling. I’m very happy now Steam has put it in their terms that ‘you cannot use this for gambling,’ but I still believe the skin economy is a good thing to have.”
– Brendan Greene, creative lead of Playerunknown’s Battlegrounds
Last man standing survival game Playerunknown’s Battlegrounds has already amassed over 2 million sales on Steam, despite having been on sale for just over a month. It’s fair to say then, that the Early Access battle royale title has found quite the following.
Still, it’s important to put that success in perspective. It’s early days after all, and given the nature of Early Access it’s likely the game will evolve and change shape during the weeks and months ahead. With that in mind, we took the chance to quiz Playerunknown himself, Brendan Green, about the game’s future during our recent Twitch stream.
More specifically, we wanted to find out more about his stance on monetization, given that people are already selling some of Battleground’s cosmetic items and gear through the Steam community marketplace.
“Putting it bluntly I would like to own an island some day. But seriously, for me anything we do with the marketplace should be done to create a valuable economy,” offered Greene, explaining that they’ll likely implement a monetization system built around randomized reward crates further down the line.
“We’re not doing monetization during early access, it’ll be afterwards. So we’ll have keys to open crates to make it simple. But we’ll also try to have rarity, so by opening a crate you can get a skin that’s worth £10 or $20,” he continued.
“I don’t want to encourage gambling. I’m very happy now Steam has put it in their terms that ‘you cannot use this for gambling,’ but I still believe the skin economy is a good thing to have in a game. Because it’s monetization for us, but it also creates an economy for clothing items.”
To hear more from Greene, including an explanation as to why he keeps his unique moniker in the game’s name, be sure to check out the full interview. And while you’re over there, why not follow the Gamasutra Twitch channel for more developer interviews, editor roundtables and gameplay commentary.