Global hit 'Battleground' developers receive up to W5 billion rewards
Developers of PUBG's "PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds" received tens of billions of won. / Korea Times file
By Ko Dong-hwan
The developers of PUBG's first-person online shooting game “PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds" received great incentive rewards for making it a global hit, with each grabbing up to 5 billion won ($4.67 million).
The South Korean game developer and its mother company Bluehole said Monday the incentive giveaway benefited 20 developers who joined the project from the start. Their incentives ranged from 1 to 5 billion won.
Perks amounting to tens of billions of won were also given to 280 other developers who joined the project after it was released to American PC game platform Steam Early Access in March 2017 and open to global markets. Each of these people was paid an average of 30 million won.
Bluehole CEO Kim Hyo-seob said he had planned the compensation from the start of the game's design and wanted to “pay back to the developers an equivalent of their global achievement performance.”
PUBG CEO Kim Chang-han approved the incentives and the list of beneficiaries, according to the Bluehole chief.
The game sold 40 million copies on Steam and its console-version released in December 2017 also sold 4 million copies.
It boosted Bluehole's sales performance from 51.4 billion won in 2016 to 667 billion won the following year. It also lifted the company's market value to above 5 trillion won, more than 20 times its value in March 2017.