PUBG: Blindspot showed real promise when we took it for a spin in 2024: PC Gamer’s Jake Tucker said that “with some polish to the controls and a proper onboarding experience, this could be a genuinely fun, highly accessible tac shooter.” But it failed to make much of a splash when it launched into early access in February, and less than two months later Krafton has seen enough.
“Since our last update, the team has been exploring multiple ways to improve the experience and move the game forward,” Sequoia Yang of developer Arc Team wrote in a Steam update. “However, after careful consideration, we have come to the conclusion that we are no longer able to sustainably provide the level of experience we set out to deliver through early access.
“As a result, PUBG: BLINDSPOT’s Early Access service will come to an end on Monday, March 30.”
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Unlike its namesake, PUBG: Blindspot was a top-down shooter—a bit like Rainbow Six Siege run through Diablo. Yang said it was “a bold attempt to explore new possibilities within the top-down tactical shooter space,” and it was reasonably well received by players: The “mixed” user rating on Steam is just one point under the “mostly positive” rating, and one of the top problems cited in negative reviews is difficulty finding matches because of the dearth of players.
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And that’s the real issue: Like so many free to play games, PUBG: Blindspot fell into a concurrent player count spiral, with low numbers of players contributing to long matchmaking queues that drive away even more players. Premium games can survive that sort of flat spin, at least for a while, but free to play games that rely on robust audiences making in-game purchases just can’t.
The PUBG: Blindspot situation may have been stressed even further by the financial situation at Krafton: The company’s revenues grew by 23% in 2025 to more than $2.1 billion, which is undeniably a lot of money, but the more important consideration—profits—declined by 11% over the same period.
And Krafton has been showing some signs of strain. In November 2025, it launched a voluntary resignation program for its employees, offering hefty buyout packages for anyone who agreed to quit. Krafton also imposed a hiring freeze at around the same time. Its recent lawsuit loss-with-a-capital-L to the three ousted heads of Subnautica 2 studio Unknown Worlds could also prove very costly.
It’s not clear what’s next for Arc Team, which is not a Krafton studio: Yang said the studio “will take some time to regroup, and we hope to return with new experiences in the future.”
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