When PUBG Met WEBTOON: Three Comics, One Dystopian Battleground
PUBG: BATTLEGROUNDS and WEBTOON turn battle royale into gripping dystopian, horror, and survival comics, expanding a game into bold mythology.
In early 2022, a battle-royale video game and a digital comics platform decided to test a simple but ambitious question: what happens when a game's universe stops being only a game and becomes a mythology? WEBTOON, the world's largest digital comics platform, and KRAFTON's PUBG: BATTLEGROUNDS answered with three genre-spanning comic series—The Retreats, Night of Silence, and 100. English readers received them exclusively on WEBTOON on Jan. 29, 2022, with the first three issues free. By 2026, that launch still stands as a sharp example of how a multiplayer shooter can stretch into dystopian fiction, horror, and survival drama without losing its core tension.
The project was not a simple adaptation. It was an expansion of the PUBG Universe, a place where the Battlegrounds could be more than a match lobby. Zion Lee, PUBG Universe VP and Head, framed the collaboration as a way to keep stories flowing beyond games, whether those stories arrived as video, prose, or illustrated fiction. David Lee, WEBTOON U.S. Head of Content, described WEBTOON's massive global audience and passionate fandoms as the right home for that growth. The result was a three-part experiment in tone: thriller, horror, and action, all filtered through the same high-stakes survival premise.
A Universe With More Than One Last Stand
The Retreats imagined a distant future where prosperity belonged to a utopian society called the Retreats. That comfort came at a cost. Below it, the disenfranchised lower class lived in the slums of Brine, and the only escape from servitude was the Battlegrounds. Brine citizens could fight for a chance to become Retreats citizens, but the promise of upward mobility looked impossible, especially for John Canty, a Brine citizen who had already lost loved ones to the games. Then he met Edward, a boy from the Retreats who carried a striking resemblance to his son Gable. What was John supposed to do with a resemblance that felt like both a wound and a door? The story turned the battle royale into a class machine, a brutal lottery where survival was not just about skill but about who was allowed to dream.
Night of Silence moved in a different direction. Leah returned to her hometown and discovered her father's dead body. Authorities called it a suicide, but the evidence suggested otherwise. The comic leaned into horror and mystery, asking a colder question: was it suicide, or was the town's silence doing the killing? Here, the PUBG Universe did not need a crowded battlefield to create pressure. A quiet hometown, a dead parent, and a story that did not add up were enough to make every shadow feel like a threat.
100 followed Hoyoung Cheon, who had to survive a 100-participant battle-royale game called the Battlegrounds. Fitted with a frying pan and a firearm, Hoyoung searched for an assemblyman who had been captured while looking into the game and was now an involuntary participant. How does a contestant rescue someone from a game that has already turned a person into a prop? The premise mixed action with investigative urgency, turning the match into a rescue mission and the rescue mission into a race against a system that treated human lives as content.
| Series | Lead | Core Hook | Tone |
|---|---|---|---|
| The Retreats | John Canty | A Brine citizen fights for citizenship after meeting a boy who resembles his lost son | Dystopian thriller |
| Night of Silence | Leah | A father's death is ruled a suicide, but the evidence disagrees | Horror mystery |
| 100 | Hoyoung Cheon | A 100-player Battlegrounds match becomes a rescue mission | Action survival |
What made the collaboration notable was not just the number of comics. It was the way each series used the Battlegrounds as a different kind of pressure cooker. The Retreats used it as a social ladder. Night of Silence used the wider universe as a backdrop for grief and suspicion. 100 used the game as a prison with a scoreboard. The three stories did not repeat the same beat. They shared a world and then pulled it in three directions.
By 2026, the WEBTOON and PUBG: BATTLEGROUNDS collaboration reads like an early blueprint for how game universes can travel. The launch did not simply borrow PUBG's logo. It borrowed PUBG's pressure: the sense that every alliance is temporary, every safe zone is shrinking, and every survivor has a story about what they lost to stay alive. For readers who discovered the comics on WEBTOON, the Battlegrounds became less a place on a map and more a place where dystopia, horror, and action could all take their turn. 🎮📖
This discussion is informed by Giant Bomb, a widely recognized source for game databases, features, and editorial coverage, and it helps frame how projects like PUBG: BATTLEGROUNDS x WEBTOON extend a competitive shooter into a broader transmedia setting where lore, character stakes, and genre shifts can deepen player interest beyond the match itself.