PUBG esports executive director leaves organisation, looking for new opportunities

Jake “The Jaker” Sin has just announced his departure from PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds – on his Twitter of all things. He mentioned that he is looking for new opportunities and that he has some regrets – specifically in regards to his own performance.

“There are many things I wished were done better, but they would have required committing company-wide resources well beyond my reach.”

He also mentions how grateful he is to his team and the people he worked with there. He praises them for what they were able to accomplish in just one year as well.

© PUBG Corp

PUBG as an esport?

After a more than rocky launch followed by success on an international scale, the company slowly got an esports scene off its feet – very slowly. Especially in the early stages, the events suffered from bugs, broken features and lag, both for regular players and at esports events.

Instead of putting effort into the esport, PUBG Corp has been aggressively focusing on the mobile version of the game. This isn’t entirely surprising – the mobile market is one of the most lucrative sections of gaming in the world, and microtransactions in mobile games make up one of the largest income shares across the entire gaming world.

However, because of their focus on this, other areas have suffered. Other platforms in general, but particularly the esports scene has not had the vital support it needs. Few esports succeed without continued active support from the game developers – while some still fail despite that, having that support is absolutely essential to the existence of an esport.

The end of a potential era

As it happens, quite a lot of players and organisations actively blamed PUBG Corp. Newly hired PUBG pro teams are already being dismissed again due to a lack of viability for the organisations.

This was one of the best rosters we've ever fielded. We're incredibly disappointed to have to release them. The team won almost every possible event, and the players did everything right. Really disappointed in PUBG Corp here.

— reynad (@TempoReynad) December 22, 2019

The game’s top teams quickly lost interest – world-famous organisations like Dignitas, CLou9 Gaming, Lazarus esports, Pittsburgh Knights and more all abandoned their PUBG ventures throughout the year – Dignitas also publicly criticised the game’s scene, if less explicitly – they claimed that they are looking forward to eventually being able to rejoin the competitive scene – in other words, at the moment, the scene isn’t in a position to make this of interest to the group.

As for PUBG themselves – they are continuing to host esports events without Jake Sin – they are planning a year-long league with a $5 million prize pool overall – not huge, not for the scale at which PUBG should be by now as an esport.

How the game’s pro scene will continue is still up in the air – it could ultimately go either way!

Read also: State of the competitive PUBG scene