Online shooting game “PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds” developed by South Korea’s Bluehole Studio won the grand prize at the 2017 Korea Game Awards on Wednesday, marking a milestone for the PC online game industry that has been struggling against mobile games.
“Battlegrounds” also swept five additional awards, including the technology innovation award, the best developer award, the game business innovation award and the most popular game award.
PUBG Corp. CEO Kim Chang-han (Bluehole Studio)
Developed by PUBG Corp., a subsidiary of Seoul-based Bluehole Studio, “Battlegrounds” is a survivor shooter game reminiscent of “Battle Royale” in which 100 players on an island fight to kill one another until there is one player remaining.
As of early November, “Battlegrounds” had sold more than 20 million copies on the online game store platform Steam and achieved more than 2.5 million concurrent players, breaking Steam records. It was also the top game played at Korea’s PC cafes in October.
“I hope that ‘Battlegrounds’ has contributed in some way to uplifting the reputation of Korea’s online game sector,” said PUBG CEO Kim Chang-han.
The 2017 Korea Games Awards was organized by the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism and hosted by the Korea Internet Digital Entertainment Association, also known as K-iDEA.
The awards ceremony was held on the eve of the global gaming convention G-Star which kicked off at the Bexco convention center in Busan on Thursday.
By Sohn Ji-young (
jys@heraldcorp.com)
