There’s been a rumor floating around recently that Bluehole, the developer of PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds, had a controlling piece of it bought by Tencent, a Chinese developer that already owns Riot Studios, the creators of League of Legends. However, the developer has since disproved the rumor; they haven’t been bought by Tencent.
PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds is the survival game sensation that’s currently taking the internet gaming community by storm, having sold millions of copies and become extremely successful to the point where it’s one of the most-streamed games on Twitch. All of that success is sure to attract the attention of larger companies, and according to the rumor Tencent wanted in on it.
PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds focuses on various groups of players as they’re flown over a deserted island filled with weapons and made to fight to the death while attempting to remain inside the perimeter of a blue ring that slowly starts to get smaller and smaller, along with avoiding artillery barrages randomly dropped in certain areas.
Since the game has been so successful (just last week it beat out League of Legends for the highest number of hours watched on Twitch), one can forgive the internet for freaking out about the possibility of Tencent acquiring Bluehole. However, apparently the Chinese business publication that began the rumor, Yicai Global, is sticking to its guns despite Bluehole disproving the rumor.
PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds is still in Early Access despite its popularity, and Bluehole is already making arrangements to bring the game to other platforms, such as the Xbox One and, eventually, the Playstation 4. At least two new maps and a number of weapons are also going to be coming out at some point.
Currently PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds is available exclusively on PC on Steam, so if you want to buy it you can go there. Or, you can wait until the game fully releases and is ported over to the Xbox One if you don’t think your PC can handle the job.
