PUBG's developers want to "popularise" games like Escape From Tarkov

rockpapershotgun.com:

Playerunknown's Battlegrounds has experimented several times with PvPvE modes, but it seems like the next project from developers PUBG Studios will mine the genre further. Specifically, the latest earnings report from publisher Krafton says the studio are working on an open world "extraction shooter".

If you haven't kept up, extraction shooters are a type of particularly deadly looter shooter, in which you're tasked with defeating (computer or human) enemies, grabbing some resource, and then escaping the area before you're wiped out yourself. Escape From Tarkov is one; the DMZ mode in Warzone 2 is another.

Krafton's take on the genre is codenamed Project BlackBudget and is Krafton "challenging ourselves to popularize the extraction shooter genre based on our PUBG production & service experience," according to page 9 of the earnings report.

There's not so much as a piece of concept art of the game yet, of course, so all this could change or the project could be scrapped entirely.

The rest of the earnings report makes for similarly interesting reading. There's brief and vague mention of the Subnautica sequel we already knew about, fantasy epic The Bird That Drinks Tears, and another game-as-service PvPvE action game called Project GoldRush.

It then gets weirder, with plans to use AI and Deep Learning to launch a "Virtual Game Friend" in 2023 which will "allow users to experience playing with & befriending in-game characters". Krafton also plan to release an 'open world user-generated content game platform', which sounds a lot like Roblox.

Personally I'm more interesting in the extraction shooter than making friends.