New multiplayer shooters seem to be having bad luck in the early part of 2026. Wildlight Studios’ raid-based fantasy FPS Highguard met an unfortunate end earlier this month after releasing in late January following its controversial Game Awards reveal, and now another shooter is closing down just months after having been released.
pubg: Blindspot is shutting down
PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds, known more simply as PUBG, was one of the first games to usher in the age of battle royale shooters a decade ago. As the genre lost steam over the years and other games like Fortnite, Apex Legends, and Call of Duty: Warzone began hogging PUBG‘s spotlight, the shooter had to adapt, turning toward an on-the-go audience with PUBG Mobile.
Over time, PUBG started looking to expand its brand into other genres as well, connecting its world to Glen Schofield’s 2022 Dead Space successor, The Callisto Protocol. Last year, PUBG revealed a new game in its universe, a 5v5 isometric tactical shooter known as Blindspot.
Pubg: Blindspot never reached 1.0
Today, PUBG: BLINDSPOT’s Early Access comes to a close.
This game was never just ours: it was our players’ too.
Thank you for supporting, believing and creating something with us.— PUBG: BLINDSPOT (@PUBG_BLINDSPOT) March 30, 2026
PUBG‘s top-down Rainbow Six Siege-like shooter went into Steam early access on February 5 and is shutting down today, on March 30, not even two full months later. One of the game’s leads, Sequoia Yang, put out a statement on the game’s Steam page about PUBG: Blindspot‘s closure, but didn’t give a clear reason for the move. Unlike Highguard‘s shutdown earlier this month, Blindspot players who had been enjoying this new flavor of PUBG weren’t given any warning.
Considering PUBG: Blindspot was only available on Steam via early access, perhaps it would’ve fared better if Krafton allowed it to reach a 1.0 release, or even better, brought it to console and mobile at some point down the line. A top-down Siege-like is quite a unique concept in the multiplayer shooter space; it might have fared better if it were able to reach more gamers as a full 1.0 release, if player count was indeed the cause of the game’s struggles.
While Blindspot is no more, the PUBG brand as a whole is still alive and well. A new extraction shooter known as PUBG: Black Budget is still in the works. With hype about extraction shooters having exploded following the release of last year’s Arc Raiders and this year’s Marathon earlier this month, it’s easy to imagine a PUBG extraction experience doing quite well. The game received a closed alpha back in December, but no release date nor window has been confirmed.
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