PUBG: DED.NET Developer Argues Making a Game for the Mass Market Where 'Nobody's Too Offended and Everybody Kind of Likes It' Has Become 'Box Office Poison'

PUBG — the battle royale that popularized the genre — already has a number of spinoffs. But none is as love it or hate it as DED.NET .

Like PUBG, DED.NET is a multiplayer first-person shooter that revolves around outlasting your enemies, but there are a number of key differences. Chief among them is roguelite progression that persists across runs, and a heavy-handed 1990s aesthetic dubbed “Grunge House.” But there’s more. Matches — even if you make it to the end — will come in at around the 25-30 minute mark, which makes it a digestible experience relative to PUBG’s more intense, longer-lasting battle royale. And while PUBG is available on console, DED.NET is built from the ground up for consoles.

Set in Cascadia in 1996, a world inspired by the Pacific Northwest of the 1990s, and with a reimagining of the PUBG formula beyond battle royale, DED.NET may prove divisive. That, creative director Dave Curd told IGN at gamescom, isn’t just okay — it’s exactly what the developers at Krafton want. In fact, Curd argued that making a game for everyone has become “box office poison.”

“Definitely PUBG was the one that brought the genre to prominence and then everyone was like, ‘What's my take? Is it destruction? Is it competitive play? Is it Twitch reactions?’ And you're picturing the games as I'm describing them,” Curd began.

“And ours is the rogue. This is the rogue version where you're always chasing a build, getting into hilarious shithousery along the way. You're telling hysterical stories, you're engaging in a world filled with Twin Peaks, X-Files, David Kronenberg, body horror. We're trying to make a real evocative, love it or hate it experience.

“I think the age of making something for the mass market... which, what is that anymore? I don't think that's safe. I don't think that's smart. I think making something that can really get a fandom, something where people feel seen and they connect with, and have just as many detractors, I think that's wiser than kind of, ‘Well, let's make sure nobody's too offended and everybody kind of likes it.’ So we're trying to be sexy, evocative, gory.”

Curd said the inspiration for DED.NET ’s Grunge House aesthetic includes grunge band Nirvana, Italian zombie movies, Grindhouse, and Tarantino movies. And, he believes that if DED.NET proves “sticky,” he expects other battle royale developers to give the ‘rogue multi-match journey’ mechanic a try.

“But what they won't be able to do is replicate our world where you can chop your hands off and replace them with machetes and have a standoff in a cult mansion, underground cellar filled with bodies,” he insisted. “We're just trying to serve up something fresh for the kids.”

What Curd is desperate to avoid here is apathy. He wants DED.NET to provoke a reaction, whether that’s good or bad. If it’s good, then great. If it’s bad, well Curd can work to turn that feeling around. But apathy is a death sentence for any video game’s prospects.

“I think middle of the road is box office poison,” Curd said. “You want lovers and haters. Haters care enough to hate, which means maybe you can reach them one day. Maybe a lot of people will see this and naturally say, ‘Hey, I don't want a Ford Bronco. I want a Ford Mustang. Keep fixing the Ford Mustang.’ And that's a very valid point. And my job is not to convince you to like cheese if you're not a cheese guy. But I think there's a lot of guys that will try it and say, ‘Okay, I'm pleasantly surprised. I'm in. They're taking a swing.’

“I've always said audiences will forgive anything but being bored. I think even if they hate us, they may respect us for taking a big swing, especially when a lot of the other big players circle their wagons, they focus on one mega product. PUBG and Krafton are out here trying to serve the fans and take big swings and try new stuff.”

Curd isn't alone in making this argument. Arrowhead, the developer of smash hit co-op shooter Helldivers 2, have long argued much the same. Indeed, Arrowhead's studio tagline is, "A game for everyone is a game for no one." This, Arrowhead has said, is why mechanics like friendly fire are always enabled in Helldivers 2. Yes, it makes the game more punishing, but it also helps it stand out.

Curd said that DED.NET betas and playtests have already shown evidence of a positive response to the game, and the initial spark of a fandom revolving around its characters.

“The initial nine roster of characters have relationships with each other, with the map. They have quests outside of Win the Chicken Dinner. They have allies and rivals on the roster that you would kind of learn about,” Curd explained.

“If I ping an ally or I revive a rival, you'll kind of get that in the VO and start to understand those relationships. We're talking two or three days into our last play test, we're getting fan art depicting these love triangles. And I wasn't expecting people to get it so soon. And that shows me some people are hyper engaging with the world and becoming actual fans and not product speak audience fans. Like real people that love the world. And that's been incredibly validating for myself and the team.”

Curd, who has worked on PUBG for nine-and-a-half-years as a creative director, said that DED.NET began life as a response to a task he was set by his boss of “spreading the gospel of PUBG to the non-believers.”

“We got a lot of fans,” he said. “We got a lot of people that love our thoughtful, cerebral, tactical gameplay. See a guy 500 feet away, do you take the fight? Do you get in the car? Do you retreat? But it's not for everybody. But we think the theme of PUBG, of survival of the fittest or dog eat dog or desperate survival, it's a good juicy theme. I think you could make a PUBG Match-3! And that might be what I pitch next!

“Can we find a different audience that would still engage with that vibe and engage with that world and engage with that IP? So I think, ‘Okay, so don't make more PUBG, but find more PUBG fans. Where do you begin?'

“So it sounds kind of maybe stupidly obvious, but I just made a list. It's like, what is cool shit that PUBG does well? Number one, it's an infinite story engine. One match, survival of the fittest, one winner, 99 losers. And I think it's endured for 10 years because anyone I talk to can tell me usually in high detail about their first Chicken Dinner. So that's the first thing you think. Well, what's the opposite of that? Could that infinite story engine persist over multiple matches? And so that was the first idea that's like, that sounds good and that would not work in PUBG because it breaks that promise of perfectly fair, perfectly balanced, single shot adventure.

“Could it be a multi-match journey? What does that mean? Originally our cheesy internal lingo was body persistence. And it was, if you swim, you'll get hypothermia and you'll be coughing. And if you get shot in the head, your ears will ring for a long time. And as we stood it up and tried it, we found that it changed the way that fans would play. They were not playing to win. They were playing to not get hurt. They're like, ‘This sucks. We don't like this.’ And it's like, oh, what if the injuries were more interesting and told better stories, just sneezing in the smoke or it hurts when you swim, or you occasionally fumble your weapon on weapon swap and you swear, or maybe you have a tick where you constantly spam taunts and give away your position? Or my favorite one, Stuntman, where when you slide or dive, occasionally there's an explosion behind you because it looks cool, but it might hurt you. It might frag your teammates.

“The genesis was I love hero shooters, but I never find exactly my favorite one. I always end up settling for the one I hate least. It's never the right combination of look and abilities for what I'm after. So we thought, could we challenge the player to go on a multi-match adventure where they're picking and choosing and making interesting decisions about who they want to be when they grow up, while managing these hilarious and weird injuries and racing against a clock of a diminishing career HP of you can only play so many before you're overwhelmed by injuries and you have to retire? That's the genesis of the product.”

Players can now also register for the upcoming closed beta. There’s no release window yet, but PUBG: DED.NET is due out on PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X and S.

Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.