Go Wayback launches to less than 200 players and rave reviews

PUBG: Battlegrounds has earned its place in the pantheon of video games. It is the sixth best-selling game of all time, with over 75 million units, and eight years after its launch, it still manages to attract millions of players daily.

After starting life as a series of mods by Brendan “PlayerUnknown” Greene, PUBG: Battlegrounds brought Krafton to life, with Greene joining the studio as a game designer. However, in 2021, Greene left the South Korean studio to work on a new game, Prologue: Go Wayback.

Krafton Offers Voluntary Resignations to Employees as It Becomes an 'AI First Company'

Crafton's priorities have changed.

After years of development, Prologue: Go Wayback finally went live on Steam yesterday. But it couldn't be the start Greene and developer PlayerUnknown Productions were looking for, with the title peaking at a paltry 182 players.

Prologue: Go Wayback is off and off to a rather bleak start

According to SteamDB, Prologue: Go Wayback peaked at just 182 concurrent players yesterday (about 33 percent of its recent Playtest, which peaked at 681 players). That's less than games like Kingdoms of the Dump, Ultimate Zombie Defense 2, and IT Specialist Simulator, which all launched in the past few days. Not a great start for a game that should have a lot of pulling power. The few who played the game didn't seem to be having much fun either.

Although it currently only has 41 reviews, it sits with the dreaded “Mixed” rating on Steam.

“It's a non-glorified walking simulator that feels like a poorly optimized tech demo. It's too resource intensive on PC and there's very little you can do besides walk around, hoping you'll find a shack with useful items, and yet the items feel like they have zero impact,” said one reviewer. Another added: “Unfortunately, by the looks of it, this isn't a game yet. This is a playtest and it's not yet in shape to be properly played.”

It's a non-glorified walking simulator that feels like a poorly optimized tech demo.

The beginning of the game, while disappointing, is not the be all and end all. The PlayerUnknown Productions team has confirmed that Go Wayback will remain in Early Access for “approximately a year” and released a full roadmap for what's next. This includes deeper gameplay elements such as “climbing, improved cooking and foraging, fuel and electrical systems, new tools and clothing for survival and exploration, more environmental variety, and more creative tools.”

The team says, “Community feedback is critical to shaping the game as we continue development,” and they'll certainly be hoping that community grows fast enough to give them feedback given the immediate launch.