PUBG: DED.NET Interview: Dave Curd Breaks Down Battle Royale That Does Everything Differently

Published Oct 9, 2026, 12:00 AM EDT

James is a gaming writer from London who has spent thousands of hours exploring titles from every genre. Though he has a particular affinity for multiplayer titles like World of Warcraft, Destiny 2 and League of Legends, he has also put thousands of hours into single-player experiences, from deep RPGs to epic PC strategies. When he's not playing or writing, he can usually be found supporting his beloved Brentford FC.

Sign in to your ScreenRant account

PUBG: Battlegrounds has grown so far beyond its earliest forms that it's difficult to remember exactly how it all started. It will always be the game that essentially grew the battle royale genre into one of the biggest and most powerful forces in gaming, and it's now an enormous franchise in its own right.

Publisher Krafton has already stated their collective intention to turn PUBG into something more resembling a platform from here on out, and a big part of that is delivering new experiences to players. Step forward, DED.net, an upcoming multiplayer first-person shooter from PUBG Studios Madison that picks up the basic premise and then throws it into a wood chipper for the fun of it.

It's a bonkers, fever dream of a game from what we've seen so far, so we sat down with Creative Director Dave Curd to discuss how it all came about, and how they plan to remain competitive in a genre saturated with absolute giants.

Roguelite FPS Meets Non-Traditional Battle Royale

PUBG Studios Madison

If you're inclined to make a battle royale in 2026, the reality is that you'll be going up against some of the biggest players in the industry as a whole. From Fortnite to PUBG itself, it really feels as though they have most of the bases covered. That's why DED.NET has to do things differently, and from everything we have seen so far, it excels at doing that from top to bottom.

The game features roguelite, run-based mechanics, as well as a bunch of other gameplay features that you wouldn't normally find in the genre. It also has an entirely unique aesthetic that immediately makes the player curious about exactly what kind of world this is all happening in. As Curd explains, a lot of different influences went into everything that features in the game at the time of writing.

"It's always been this ideal of what the 90s was to me, this David Lynchian, Twin Peaks, X-Files, Cronenberg body horror, Wu-Tang Clan, Nine-Inch Nails, horror meat grinder. This is what we've been chasing the whole time and now finally, after two and a half years, the team has that feeling showing quite well I think."

As he goes on to detail further, the development team has covered a lot of different bases when it comes to achieving the exact aesthetic and experience they are looking for, and that might draw the interest of other major developers looking to create their own new projects:

"A game is gameplay and narrative, right? So, if this multi-match journey is as fun as we believe it is, of course all the big guys will maybe take their stab at it, which is only natural and would be very validating and flattering. But what they won't do is have baby dolls with drills plunging into necks. They won't have Johnny Danger, a real-life Madison DJ who's been a DJ on the radio for over 30 years, as their announcer. I mean, if you want to evoke the 90s, you can't do better than a real f**king DJ. They'll probably also have very sexy characters, but we are trying to make a very evocative, specific, love-it-or-hate-it thing. I think the age of “let's make something for everybody and cast a wide net”, is suicide in 2026. We want something with strong defenders and strong detractors because we believe an audience will forgive anything but being bored."

We have seen countless examples in this genre and beyond that fell by the wayside quickly, largely because of their lack of willingness to take risks and break from the established path. There's no guarantee those risks will pay off here, but it certainly gives them a fighting chance from the outset. At the very least, it's nice to see such dedication to the approach, when they could have presumably used AI or an equivalent soulless tool to replicate the effect of a DJ or something similar.

A Game Where Anyone Can Win

Equally, the problem with so many battle royale games is that they simply don't offer enough variety and tools for players to win the game, unless they are simply much better at everyone else at shooting a gun. Even for the best players, that gets boring eventually, and it happens a lot quicker if you aren't particularly gifted at competitive shooters. All the elements above add chaos, but they also act as something of a leveler that should make the game a lot more competitive than other genre efforts, as Curd explains.

"What we've learned is that players will tolerate and prefer authored unfairness, but they really push back against unfairness they can't help. Speaking of the mid 90s setting, Big Lebowski has this great quote: “Sometimes you eat the bear, sometimes the bear eats you.” In a single fight, in a single match, you may come against a character where, even though you're both phase three, he may have 30 cards in his deck and you might have 10. And when you lose, you might be like, “Nah, this game is bulls**t.” But over an entire run, sometimes you're gonna be on top and sometimes you're gonna be on the bottom. Sometimes I'm stomped and sometimes I'm the stomper.

"You still need the gunplay to be meaningful and interesting. We've stretched out the time to kill just a little bit, maybe two more bullets, because what we found is, in the previous betas, people were really loving the chaos, but they wished there was a bit more clarity. So, when we have a guy who can just slide up on you, pop up and twin shotgun you, and vanish, there is a sense of “what happened? Why did I die?” By taking a couple of extra bullets to get through a gunfight, players are better able to handle that cognitive load of the 70+ abilities that the players will be taking on. So I do think, especially for players that have fantasies of disruption or melee or of being a strong support, you can have a lot of fun in this game even if you're not the number one headshot sniper."

Scarcely Believable Depth

The main issue for DED.NET now, as I see it, is getting across just how many unique elements of their game are in-play on a match-by-match basis. It really is difficult to overstate just how many options and ways to play they are presenting here, so Curd broke down exactly what a night playing the game would look like for the average player.

"I just got off work, it's time to play DED.Net. You pick a character, and we offer you three starter decks. These are very easy to understand core fantasies for you just to get your footing. Call it Assault Support and Trickster. In this example, let's go Trickster. Start a Trickster run, we get 10 cards or abilities in your hand. It's time for the first match, but before I get into the first match, when you select that run, I've got something called Run Hit Points (we're going to have to get a better name than that.) If I lose really, really early, I might lose 20 Run Hit Points. If I finish top five, I might just lose five Hit Points, and if I can win a chicken dinner, I might heal 25. So, I'm trying to get five matches before my Run Hit Points are depleted.

"I’ve got my starter deck of trickster s**t. I know I've got a hundred Hit Points. I'm trying to get five matches. I got ten cards from that deck. I go into match one. Five phases of the blue zone shrinking. Every phase, we pull two cards from your deck and ask you to make a choice. Phase one: Do you want cannibalism or do you want to hide in the locker like a creep? I'm trying to eat people. I choose cannibalism.

"Now, every time I kill somebody and they're a dead body on the floor, I see a delicious, succulent chicken dinner. Phase two: Two more powers from your death. Then you choose three, and four. Now by phase five, you've made your final selection. Your build is online. You're really feeling like a trickster. You're really feeling good about yourself, and you get to third place."

There's plenty more to do from there though, and you'll be presented with even more choices in between rounds that affect how things will play out moving forward.

"We go out of the game to the body shop. We only got third place that run, losing five Hit Points. Okay, but we offer you three choices and you have to take them. We're going to offer you something from that core Trickster fantasy. Maybe Peekaboo, a fun ability where, when I get close enough to you, I can see your outline and you can see my outline. Then we'd offer you two more powers that are very outside the fantasy. Maybe more support, maybe more assault, or maybe more generalist. Choose one and move on.

"The only thing that's getting different over time is the deeper into the run you go, the more we start folding in injuries to those choices. So now there's akimbo, but it's coming with two injuries that are gonna poison your deck. Say, a small chance to just throw my gun way out of my hand on weapon swap, or to sneeze in the smoke, or have a tick where I keep spamming taunts uncontrollably. My favorite, we call Hollywood Stuntman, which has a very small chance to trigger an explosion when you dive.

"Inside of the match, it's a phase-based progression where all 60 players are coming to full strength at the same time. Deeper into the run, my deck's getting bigger and I have even more full powers, but also, injuries. You're hoping to get to the end of phase five, win the run, and level that run up so the next time you play, can you go seven matches?"

It's depth that we haven't really seen in any battle royale release to date, and it could prove to be a huge advantage in the longevity department. The main task for any genre entry is to keep people coming back over the course of years, and that huge variability and sense of chaos could be a great way to get them to do that.

When all is said and done, it is very difficult to predict just how a new battle royale will land with players the world over, but if any game has given itself a great chance of standing out from the crowd, it's DED.NET. The game's first closed beta test is set to begin on October 9 for PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series S/X in North America, so if you do fancy giving it a go, head over to their website and sign-up for the chance to be selected.

Systems