PUBG Blindspot was a free-to-play, 5v5 top-down tactical shooter and a spin-off of PUBG, the classic battle royale credited as one of the pioneers of the genre that forever changed online multiplayer shooters. 'Was' is the keyword here because the game has already been removed from Steam, as publisher Krafton has decided to shut down the spin-off title just two months after its early access launch.
The news was revealed in a statement published to the game's now-defunct Steam page by Sequoia Yang from ARC Team, the studio that developed Blindspot alongside Krafton Yang began by thanking those who had played Blindspot and been a part of the game's journey as an early access title, before getting into the game's unceremonious ends.
"Since our last update, the team has been exploring multiple ways to improve the experience and move the game forward," Yang wrote. "However, after careful consideration, we have come to the conclusion that we are no longer able to substantially provide the level of experience we set out to deliver through Early Access. We place player experience at the center of every decision we make, and it is based on that principle that we have made this decision."
"As a result, PUBG: Blindspot's Early Access service will come to an end on Monday, March 30." The statement was shared just days before the actual shutdown today, giving its remaining players (of which there were at least a couple hundred, per SteamDB), their last chance to play Blindspot before it was removed from Steam and its online services were turned off.
With Blindspot gone, the remaining PUBG spin-off Krafton has coming up is PUBG: Black Budget, an extraction shooter that could potentially continue the momentum the genre is currently enjoying, carried by titles like ARC Raiders and Marathon.
Last month, Krafton released its latest financial results, which saw the company reach an "all-time high" in revenue of $2.05 billion, driven by the PUBG franchise for a fifth consecutive year. When those results were published, Krafton's outlook for the year included Blindspot and Black Budget both driving growth alongside the main PUBG offering.
It's clear with this shutdown that Blindspot was unable to drive growth in the way Krafton had hoped. It peaked at 3,251 concurrent players on Steam just shortly after its launch, though engagement seemingly nosedived before the end of the month, and outside of March 1, it has been unable to hit over 1k concurrent players for the entirety of March.
This shutdown also comes after Krafton lost a very public legal battle with the co-founders of Unknown Worlds, the studio behind the indie hit Subnautica and its upcoming sequel, Subnautica 2. Krafton has also recently made statements that it is becoming an "AI-First" company, with its most recent push in that direction being the creation of a new role, chief AI officer.
About the author: David has been writing about videogames, technology, and culture since 2020, with a focus on reporting daily news across multiple publications, including GameDaily.Biz, GameSkinny, and PlayStation Universe before joining Wccftech in 2025. David started contributing as Canada/US reporter for Wccftech's gaming section in 2025. Besides being up-to-date on the industry's movements, he loves interviewing developers, reviewing games, and writing intricate essays about the symbolism and layered meanings to be found in rich narratives as he's done for publications like GamesIndustry.Biz, LostInCult, and others. Outside of games he loves movies, music, theatre, his hometown, and his family, though not necessarily in that order.
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