In an interview with Rock Paper Shotgun, conducted in April but published this week, the creator of PlayerUnknown's Battleground Brendan Greene said he could "guarantee" PUBG would leave Steam's Early Access programme "six or seven months" after its arrival.
"It’s the team," he said. "It’s a matter of honour, you know? We will finish this game in six months."
We reported on this declaration yesterday, suggesting that Greene's words point to full release by October against his proposed timeframe. Now, it seems that might have been a touch over ambitious as PlayerUnknown himself has now issued PC Gamer with the following statement:
"Today I want to update everyone on PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds progress through Early Access. The amount of support and feedback we have received from our community has been incredible. I want to thank you all for your bug reports, feedback and suggestions. As we continue to fix bugs, improve gameplay and add new content, it’s important to for us to deliver you a fully realized and polished Battle Royale experience as we look towards launch.
"Over the past few months I have done a lot of interviews, and in many of them, I said we hoped to be out of Early Access six months after we first launched. I’ve come to realize that restricting the window to a specific month could hinder us from delivering a fully featured game and/or lead to disappointment within the community if the launch deadline is not met.
"So, we have decided that we are going push the full launch back a bit from the initial six-month timeframe, but want to assure you that we are still planning a full release before the end of Q4 2017.
"We will continue to push weekly and monthly updates until full launch as we want to ensure that the game we release is the best version possible. This is why we’re giving a launch window rather than an exact date. We hope this makes sense, and appreciate your understanding.
"As always, I want to thank you all for your continued support."
PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds has become a runaway hit following its March Early Access launch, and has impressed with its run of thorough monthly updates since.
Perhaps the scope of the project has shifted in light of such success. In any event, Q4, 2017 runs from October 1 through December 31.
