Brendan Greene, aka PlayerUnknown and the creator of PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds, has announced the formation of a new independent game studio in Amsterdam, Netherlands.

Greene was originally a modder whose experiments with the battle royale genre eventually led to the creation of PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds. He was later hired by Bluehole to continue developing the game under the newly formed PUBG Studios.

Following the success of PUBG, Bluehole renamed itself Krafton and in 2019 Greene announced he was stepping away from PUBG to work on experimental projects with a small team in Amsterdam.

However, Greene is now leaving the company altogether to form his own independent studio, though Krafton will hold a minority stake in Greene’s new company.

“I’m so very grateful to everyone at PUBG and Krafton for taking a chance on me and for the opportunities they afforded me over the past four years,” Greene says in a statement. “Today, I’m excited to take the next step on my journey to create the kind of experience I’ve envisaged for years.”

Greene’s new studio hasn’t revealed its name or what it’s working on, but in 2019 Greene said he’s done with the battle royale genre.

Meanwhile, Krafton is continuing the development of PUBG and a sequel set in the near future called PUBG: New State. Other Krafton studios include Striking Distance Studios, which is working on the horror game The Callisto Protocol from Dead Space creator Glen Schofield, as well as a PUBG animated series from producer Adi Shankar.

Matt T.M. Kim is IGN's News Editor. You can reach him @lawoftd.

A new AI tool called StyleCLIP allows you to turn images into realistic faces, so we thought it'd be fun to see what some of our favorite video game, TV, and movie characters would look like in the real world.

Take a look at our full gallery below, to see realistic imaginations of Kratos, Sephiroth, and yes, Handsome Squidward from Spongebob.

StyleCLIP is part of the recent wave of AI tools that let you do all sorts of things to alter photos. A deeper explanation can be found here, with StyleCLIP being described as "essentially Photoshop driven by text, with all the good, bad, and chaos that entails." Neat.

If you want to try it for yourself, you can download the StyleCLIP program. Thanks to Corridor Crew for the idea!

Logan Plant is a freelance writer for IGN. You can find him on Twitter @LoganJPlant.

If you watched, like the rest of the world, a massive cargo ship stuck in the Suez Canal for nearly a week and thought, `I could've done better," then Whatever on Steam is the game for you.

That's because it's a cargo ship drifting game that actually lets you steer a ship through a canal, not unlike the actual Suez Canal. It was created by someone curious about how hard such a task might actually be.

Spoilers: It's apparently not easy.

"WHATEVER is my attempt to answer that question and fulfill my curiosity," developer Napas Torteeka writes on the game's Steam page. "You will cry and finally realize how amazing every cargo ship's captain is because it is extremely hard to pilot that !$@%!$# 200,000-tonne cargo ship with their extreme inertia through the canal."

The game's title is Whatever, which is also the title of the player-controlled cargo ship in the game. It's a nod to the Ever Given cargo ship that was stuck in the Suez Canal for six days earlier this year.

Axios spoke to developer Torteeka about the game and how it came to be, and it turns out, it's the first game Torteeka has developed in 15 years.

"I just wondered: How could that be possible?" Torteeka said to Axios. "What were the captain and the crew doing to get it stuck that way? When I first played my prototype, I knew how amazing every cargo ship captain is."

Whatever seems like a simple game — drift through waterways while collecting coins and safely deliver the ship's cargo — but if it's anything like last year's Suez Canal ordeal, something simple and mundane might turn into a seemingly insurmountable task.

If drifting through the Suez Canal sounds easy, Whatever also tosses wind gusts, whirlpools, kaiju, UFOs, and more at you. Whatever's current release date is listed on Steam as "Once the ship is ready" (nice), but Torteeka tells Axios that an early access version is coming in late September.

Whatever is certainly drawing on real-world news on purpose and thanks to it, players will get the chance to drift through its canals soon. The Suez incident didn't just help inspire games, but delay them too like how the Analogue Pocket Gameboy-like device was delayed as a result of the boat stuck in the Suez Canal.

Wesley LeBlanc is a freelance news writer and guide maker for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @LeBlancWes.

Halo Infinite finally has a release date, and it's not what any of us would've guessed. We analyze what the December date may or may not mean, celebrate both the unsurprising special-edition Halo controller and the definitely-surprising special-edition Halo Infinite Xbox One, discuss the negative reaction to the Saints Row reboot, give our hands-on impressions of Far Cry 6, and more!

Subscribe on any of your favorite podcast feeds, to our new YouTube channel, or grab an MP3 download of this week's episode. For more awesome content, check out our Halo Infinite Flight performance preview, which does a deep-dive tech analysis on the still-in-development slice of Halo Infinite multiplayer:

Oh, and you can be featured on Unlocked by tweeting us a video Loot Box question! Tweet your question and tag Ryan at @DMC_Ryan!

For more next-gen coverage, make sure to check out our Xbox Series X review, our Xbox Series S review, and our PS5 review.

A Life is Strange TV adaptation is still in the works, and it's now enlisted Grammy-nominated singer Shawn Mendes to oversee the music for the series.

A Life is Strange TV series was first announced back in 2016 after Legendary picked up the adaptation rights from Square Enix. Since then, however, there has been no news about the show.

Now, along with Mendes, Life is Strange also adds Anonymous Content, a production company behind shows like 13 Reasons Why whose dark take on high school life may fit well with the premise of Life is Strange.

When Legendary first announced plans to make a Life is Strange TV show, only the first game was released. It followed art student Max Caulfield who must survive bullies and disappearing students while also navigating her ability to rewind time.

Since then, however, there have been many more games in the series including Life is Strange 2, Life is Strange: Before the Storm, and the upcoming Life is Strange: True Colors. While Before the Storm is a prequel to the first Life is Strange, Life is Strange 2 and True Colors follow different protagonists on their own adventures.

Each of the games also places heavy emphasis on music, usually indie bands. Bringing on Mendes to oversee music for the series will hopefully ensure that this key aspect from the games transitions to TV.

With several games in the series already, there are a lot of potential storylines for the TV adaptation to take.

Life is Strange: True Colors is set to be released on September 10, though a remastered version of the first Life is Strange has been delayed until 2022. Check back with IGN for updates on the Life is Strange series closer to the game’s launch.

Matt T.M. Kim is IGN's News Editor. You can reach him @lawoftd.