If you weren’t already aware, PUBG owes a lot to Bohemia Interactive’s military shooter Arma 3. If it weren’t for the game’s existence, we may not have ever seen PUBG in the form we know of now, or at all. Originally, PUBG was spawned out of a mod for Arma 3 that quickly transformed into one of the most popular fanmade mods of all time, including other games and other platforms.
It’s ridiculously impressive to think something like PUBG could have started with such humble origins, but it’s true — and now developer Bohemia Interactive is celebrating its enormous community of four million players. They certainly deserve more than that, with PUBG owing much of its success and status as an untouchable Battle Royale game to the original mod.
Brendan “PlayerUnknown” Greene created the original PUBG mod, and the mod is still up for you to try. In fact, Greene stated last year to Polygon that he pays to keep dedicated servers for the game online in a show to what catapulted him to success in the first place.
If you’re interested in trying out the mod, you can jump onto Arma 3 and play it for free on Steam all weekend. It’s a promotion that’ll last through April 30, so you’ve got a few days left to jump in if you think seeing what essentially amounts to the earliest version of PUBG around sounds interesting. There’s an entire gallery of mods you can choose from, which is one of the big reasons players still flock to the game aside from its military-themed shooter prowess.
If you try out the original mod, make sure you report back to us and let us know what you think!