Back in September, we wrote about an interview where PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds creator Brendan Greene told Gamesindustry.biz that Rare, the developers of Sea of Thieves, had offered to share their water technology with him to improve the look and physics of the water in PUBG. Several outlets, including us, interpreted that this meant that they had agreed to share the technology. However, some of us thought this sounded kind of weird. One of the reasons for this is that it's often very difficult to implement these kind of technologies into a game's code. That's why we just had to ask Mr. Greene for a clarification when speaking with him earlier this week. Turns out, our suspicions were right:
"No, we're not. I need to clarify this right now. I might not have been as precise as I should have been in the interview. A lot of people have misunderstood what I said. Yes, Rare offered us to use their water tech, but we quickly realised that it wouldn't be possible to use in PUBG without having to do significant changes to the game's core code. Changes that would have taken a very long time to do, or maybe even be impossible. By all means, it's been incredibly fun to share knowledge and experiences with other developers, but there are just a few technologies we can't use in our game. Sea of Thieves' water tech is one of these."
So there you have it. We won't see a pirate version of PUBG using Rare's impressive water technology anytime soon, despite Greene telling us that it wasn't a bad idea.
Are you disappointed by this, or is the water in PUBG fine as it is?