Krafton has ended development of PUBG: Black Budget, the extraction shooter spin-off it revealed in November 2025. The studio posted the decision on the game's Steam page on October 1, 2026, less than a year after the public reveal and with no release date ever set. It is the second PUBG side project Krafton has publicly cut in 2026.

What Black Budget Was

Black Budget was a first-person PvEvP shooter that mixed extraction loops with battle royale gunplay. Players dropped onto Coli, an island locked in a time loop, as contractors sent to loot a classified research site and fight their way to an extraction point. Strange weather and other anomalies were meant to make each run feel different from the last.

PUBG Studios Amsterdam led the project. Creative director Paweł Smolewski had worked on early ballistics for the original PUBG. The idea was not brand new inside Krafton. It showed up in company materials as far back as 2022, then got a full public reveal in November 2025.

Two closed alpha tests followed:

  • December 12 to 21, 2025, split across two sessions for Steam players in North America, Europe, and Asia.
  • June 26 to 29, 2026, framed at the time as a step toward official launch.

Early tests drew interest. One report put the peak concurrent count near 10,000, and the game climbed Steam wishlist charts. Feedback from the first alpha also flagged muddy combat clarity, fatigue over repeated runs, crashes, and cheats.

Why Krafton Walked Away

The studio said an internal review of development status and future direction led to the cut. In the Steam post, Krafton wrote that the current direction "would not allow us to deliver an experience players could enjoy over the long term." It thanked closed alpha testers and said PUBG Studios will carry lessons from development and testing into future projects.

That is a soft way of saying the game did not look like a durable live service. Extraction shooters remain a crowded niche led by a few established titles, and Krafton has used early tests to decide whether a project deserves more money.

A Second Spin-Off Cut This Year

Black Budget joins PUBG: Blindspot, a top-down 5v5 tactical shooter shut down in March 2026 after about two months in early access. That game peaked at a little over 3,000 concurrent players on Steam, then fell to a few hundred.

The core PUBG: Battlegrounds business is still the priority. In August, Krafton showed PUBG: DED.NET at gamescom, a roguelike shooter with a much stranger look. Black Budget's page may still accept wishlists, but development is over, and no launch is coming.