PlayerUnknown’s studio is downsizing, making its Prologue game free, and looking into refunding those who bought it

PlayerUnknown Productions has announced that it will making layoffs and halting development on its early access game Prologue: Go Wayback.

Described by the studio as “a single-player open-world emergent survival roguelike where every journey is unique”, Prologue: Go Wayback was released on Steam and the Epic Games Store in November 2025 as an early access title,

Studio founder Brendan Greene – also known as PlayerUnknown – has now posted an update, however, stating that the studio can no longer afford to continue development on the game, and that it has halted all development as it plans to downsize the team.

“When PlayerUnknown Productions became an independent studio in 2021, we embarked on a journey to achieve an ambitious vision for the future,” Greene’s statement on X reads.

“Our goal has been to develop technology that can break the boundaries of scale, which currently limit how large virtual worlds can be. To achieve this, we built a research team to develop our Melba technology and a team to develop our first practical application of our terrain generation technology: Prologue: Go Wayback.

“Unfortunately I have reached the limits of how far I can continue to fund this journey in its current form. As a result, I have made the hard decision to restructure the studio. We will continue developing our Melba technology with a smaller team, while halting further development of Go Wayback. Our immediate priority is to support our affected employees to the best of our abilities during this difficult transition.

“We plan to make Go Wayback available for free for all future players with an upcoming update. We are also investigating offering players who have purchased the game on Steam and Epic Games Store a way to receive a refund. We will have more details on this in the near future.

“Lastly, I want to thank our community and everyone who has been involved in supporting our studio’s journey so far.”

An update has also been posted on the game’s Steam page, providing similar information but adding: “While we hope the studio can return to Go Wayback at a future point in time, right now it means we will be unable to complete our Early Access plans for the game.”