PUBG 2.0 will broaden from battle royale to UGC and games platform

• Krafton CFO Dongkeun Bae has reassured investors that PUBG 2.0 is coming.
• In the short-term, more collaborations are on the way like a Transformers crossover.
• Long-term, PUBG's strategy is to launch multiple game modes and become its own platform.

"In the second half of the year, as we prepare for more competitive collaborations, I can tell you that from a short-term perspective you can have high expectations," says Krafton CFO Dongkeun Bae.

Speaking to investors during Krafton’s latest earnings call, he reaffirmed that updates are being made to PUBG to move it to Epic’s Unreal Engine 5.

This is in a move to create "PUBG 2.0", which aims to be a transformation for the title from battle royale to games platform and UGC hub. Various modes are currently being developed towards that end.

Short-term and long-term goals

The PUBG franchise has seen double-digit growth year-over-year in both Q1 and Q2 2025, resulting in double-digit growth for the first half of this year overall. Mobile revenue has seen "quite significant" growth also, up 6% Y/Y over the first half of 2025.

In the second half of the year, more collaborations are to follow - like a Transformers crossover this September which is expected to bring new themed areas, Optimus Prime, Megatron and more to the game.

Bae suggested that there won’t necessarily be cannibalisation in what players are willing to spend on "just because we’re providing a lot of collaborative content", but rather argued "how appealing the new skin is versus the existing skin" will be the deciding factor in how lucrative these events are.

"That’s the key. That’s the challenging aspect," he noted.

But further down the pipeline, major overhauls like UGC and the move to Unreal will be coming. These changes were referred to as PUBG’s "long-term strategy".

Bae confirmed that Krafton is "speeding up the process" of reworking the game, but for the time being, UGC capabilities are only available to PUBG’s creator base. Those users’ feedback will inform Krafton on how to best prepare UGC capabilities for a rollout to all players.

He assured Krafton is "not just doing it because it’s currently the mainstream" but because UGC will allow players to create things for themselves.

"In the age of PUBG 2.0, it will not just simply be a battle royale game per se. It will play a role as a gameplay platform, and so we are developing wide-ranging modes under that objective," he explained.

Investors were also reminded that Krafton is developing a mobile version of Palworld, the popular open-world survival game known colloquially online as ‘Pokémon with Guns’.