In the month of September, Government of India officially banned PUBG and soon memes about PUBG lovers started going viral
This game has sold more than 50 million copies and 200 million users downloaded it. However, the person who made them all crazy never really got enough attention, at least in India. Therefore, we decided to talk about him and give Brandan Greene his fair share of limelight.
In 2013, 31 years old Brandan was in Brazil, divorced and earning 300$ a month. HIs source of income was Wedding Photography and designing websites as a part time job. He wanted to save money for flying to his native place in Ireland. He did not have enough money for entertainment and socializing, so he used to play video games to find escape from boredom.
While keeping himself away from the remaining world, he found the world of ‘mods’ (Modifications). With mods, players can customize their own version of a game by using source code.
In 2014, finally he moved to Ireland and started living with his parents. As per the welfare given by Irish government, he started receiving the unemployment benefit of 180 euros per week. This helped Greene to pay computer servers for hosting his gaming mods.
After 6 months of living with unemployment benefits, finally a fateful thing happened. A person from Sony Online Entertainment (Daybreak game company), caught someone using his battle royale ARMA mod on Twitch. Soon Sony developer called him and asked to work with them as a consultant for game H1Z1 so that Sony could license his battle royal concept to use in their game.
Arden calls it ‘A very lucky break for me’.
In 2016, Bluehole, a South Korean company asked Greene to develop his own battle royal title. This gave birth to PlayerUnknown’s Battleground (PUBG).
And the rest is history.
Sales took off from the first day itself. After six months they had 30,000,00 online players at a time.
In an interview to ‘CNBC make it’, Greene says, “It was such a massive growth that it didn’t really sink in, and I don’t think it really has, so it’s kept us all quite grounded.”
The journey from 2013 to 2020 was not simple.
Greene still uses his bike to go to office in Amsterdam. He still works everyday 9 am to 5 pm.
Talking about his success, Greene says, “I am comfortable now; I can provide for my family and my 13 year old daughter.”