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New job listings at PUBG Corp suggest that the studio is working on an unannounced shooter which incorporates sci-fi themes like monster and mechs.
Originally spotted by PUBG sleuth PlayerIGN (opens in new tab) (as PCGamesN (opens in new tab) noted), several job listings recently popped up on PUBG Corp’s Korean web portal (opens in new tab). Curiously, 14 of these are attached to the project “Vertical,” which doesn’t fit with any of the games that we know the studio’s working on. The PUBG-adjacent Callisto Protocol has its own job listings via external developer Striking Distance, and both PUBG Mobile and PUBG: New State are individually labeled in this careers page. In other words, this looks like something new.
These job listings are all in Korean, so we’ve relied on two translation apps to help us parse them. Details plucked from job listings should never be taken as gospel, especially for games so early in development, and that’s especially true here given the language barrier. That said, a few recurring keywords and themes suggest that whatever Vertical is, it’s quite different from the PUBG games we’re familiar with.
One listing for a character modeler (opens in new tab) notes “human/creature” models, and specifies “monster character creation” as well as “cyborgs, robots, and exosuits” in a list of potential subjects. Similar themes come up under character concept artist (opens in new tab), including “cyborgs, robots, weapons, and mechas.” An animator (opens in new tab) listing also mentions “humans, creatures, monsters, animals, insects, firearms, vehicles, etc.”
A listing for a system designer (opens in new tab) offers some more fundamental details. It calls for experience with “sci-fi genre shooting and action games” as well as “content related to puzzle games in video games.” This helps narrow things down from an ‘every theme and the kitchen sink’ approach to a more specific sci-fi shooter. It’s also clear that Unreal Engine 4 is the bedrock of the game, as it comes up in multiple job listings.
Likewise, a world/level designer (opens in new tab) listing asks for people with “experience playing open-world, shooting, and action games,” not to mention familiarity with “procedural generation.” These are the only mentions of open-world and procedurally generated content that I could find, and given how slight they are, I wouldn’t commit to project Vertical being a fully open-world or procedurally generated game. We can’t even definitively rule out battle royale as the genre, but sci-fi appears to be the overarching theme.
We do know that some sort of “PUBG-related” game is coming by the end of 2022.
