PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds‘ mix of stealth and all-out chaos has made it one of the most popular games around, but its lack of polish — which took central stage at the PUBG Global Invitational — has taken a toll on the game’s reputation and player count.
To address that the game’s developer, Bluehole, has launched a “Fix PUBG” campaign meant to address the community’s most pressing concerns.
Fix PUBG is a months-long campaign to deliver the changes and improvements that you’ve been asking for,” PUBG Corporation said on the official website. “We’ve created a road map with specific details about our plans, and we intend to update it as we go, checking things off as we deliver on our promises.”
The campaign is split into several different categories that focus on problems like cheating, matchmaking, server performance, and bug fixes. In August, the team aims to optimize level streaming, and has already cut the time it takes to load a level from over 14 seconds to under six.
Cheating has proven an ongoing problem in PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds, particularly on PC, and a few new changes are being made to better combat the issue. The first is a report-results notification system, which will let you know when a report you filed resulted in a player being banned. Eventually, players will be banned on a hardware level to decrease the chance of doing so again, and legal action is being taken against those who develop or distribute cheating tools.
The matchmaking system will be undergoing a major overhaul, which the road map said should be done around October. Changes will be implemented to account for players’ languages and distances, but it appears to be in the early stages at the moment.
“This is a complicated system to build and get right, which means we have a lot of work to get done in this area so we don’t want to make any hasty promises,” the team said. “Our goal is to provide all players with a healthy queue that ensures a stable and fair game.”
We’ll see if the changes will be enough to satisfy PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds‘ fans. What was once the biggest game around has been losing its players, and the introduction of battle royale modes in the Call of Duty and Battlefield series over the next few months likely won’t help.
