The most successful game on Steam of all time is getting a spin-off in the style of ARC Raiders, you can play it from tomorrow
The developers of PUBG have surprisingly announced a playtest for their new shooter in the style of ARC Raiders on December 12, 2025. The test will take place on Steam.
What game is it about? PUBG: Black Budget is a new extraction shooter set in the universe of … you guessed it … PUBG. You will be sent on a mission to an island to explore an abandoned research facility and recover secret technology.
The catch: The island is trapped in a time loop and is haunted by an anomaly. Additionally, there are other contractors who are also keen on the artifacts. With each loop, your visit to the station is supposed to become more unpredictable. The longer you stay, the more difficult it will be to successfully extract.
Between missions, you build up your personal base to manufacture new equipment, improve skills, and prepare for the next trip to the island.
The new trailer prepares you for the upcoming playtest of PUBG: Black Budget:
PUBG: Black Budget prepares for closed alpha test with a new trailer
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Registration is open, test starts on December 12
What is known about the playtest? Interested players can now register for the playtest on Steam. The test will run for two weeks, from Friday to Monday.
- Week 1: December 12 (Fri) 10:00 AM to December 15 (Mon) 08:59 AM
- Week 2: December 19 (Fri) 01:00 AM to December 22 (Mon) 08:59 AM
The test focuses on the following areas of the game:
- Systems at the start of the game
- Combat pace
- Extraction balance
- Player progression
Why should you take a look? With Playerunknown’s Battlegrounds, PUBG Corporation and KRAFTON once created the first major battle royale hit and set an all-time record on Steam with 3,257,248 players simultaneously. In comparison: Black Myth: Wukong is in second place with 2,415,714 simultaneously active players.
Even though the record is almost 8 years old, PUBG is still relevant today. There are very few other games on Steam that can attract more players to the servers day after day. Currently (December 11, 2025, 06:10 PM), for example, 351,412 players are playing the shooter. Only the Valve classics Counter-Strike 2 and Dota 2 have more.
After having enormous success in the battle royale genre for many years, it seems they now want to offer fans of extraction shooters a new home – no wonder when you look at the success of the current genre hit ARC Raiders.
By the way: The creator of PUBG, Brendan Greene, is returning with his new studio and a fresh game. However, this is just the beginning of a large-scale project that you should also keep an eye on: The new game from the makers of PUBG will disappoint battle royale fans, but survival enthusiasts can already test the beta
This is an AI-powered translation. Some inaccuracies might exist.
