Krafton has ended development of PUBG: Black Budget, its extraction-shooter spin-off, less than a year after revealing the game in November 2025. The publisher announced the cancellation on the game’s Steam page on Thursday, October 1, following an internal review.

As Eurogamer reported, Krafton said its review found the project’s current direction would not support an experience players could enjoy over the long term. The game will not make it to launch, despite several closed tests and a sizeable premise built around bending the familiar PUBG formula.

An extraction shooter on a time-loop island

Black Budget was positioned as the next major PUBG game, mixing extraction-shooter mechanics with battle-royale elements. This was a PvEvP first-person shooter set on an island caught in a time loop, where strange weather and other anomalies were intended to make each match feel different.

Gameplay footage from the announced title PUBG: Black Budget.

The project had been spotted in a Krafton financial report in 2023, before the publisher publicly revealed it. Several closed tests followed, with the most recent and largest taking place in June; those tests gave players a chance to try the game and share feedback before the decision to stop development.

That is a short public life for a project with years of development behind it. Black Budget was announced with an unusual setting and a clear pitch, but Krafton ultimately concluded that its current direction could not deliver the long-term player experience it wanted.

Milestone What happened 2023 Black Budget appeared in a Krafton financial report. November 2025 Krafton revealed the extraction-shooter spin-off. June 2026 The game held its most recent and largest closed test. October 1, 2026 Krafton announced that development had ended. Another PUBG spin-off ends before launch

Black Budget is the second PUBG spin-off to be publicly canceled. PUBG: Blindspot, a 5v5 top-down tactical shooter with a style that drew from Rainbow Six Siege, was canceled in March after two months in early access.

Krafton has not said what the Black Budget team will work on next. It did say PUBG Studios would take lessons from development and testing into future projects, but offered no further details about the team’s plans.

The next announced spin-off is PUBG: Ded.Net, revealed at Gamescom in August. Developed by Krafton’s Madison, Wisconsin studio, it is a multiplayer shooter with an ’80s aesthetic and roguelite elements, a rather different proposition from Black Budget’s extraction-shooter setup.

For now, Ded.Net is the next announced experiment in a PUBG line that has recently seen two projects stopped before they could establish themselves. Krafton’s decision on Black Budget makes clear that the publisher was not prepared to keep pushing the game in its existing direction simply because it had already reached closed testing.

The post Black Budget Joins PUBG’s Second Spin-Off Canceled Before Launch appeared first on The Escapist.