The Future of PUBG

As most gamers are aware, Player Unknown’s Battlegrounds (PUBG) has been an instant market success.

Steamdb’s most recent figures show that sales have surpassed 15 million copies and a peak concurrent player count that topped two million. To put that in perspective: PUBG’s concurrent player count is more than 700,000 players higher than DOTA 2, the previous holder of that record.

It may be a while before PUBG surpasses DOTA’s number of total owners, currently at 116 million, but I wouldn’t rule out the possibility. In the meantime, it’s worth noting that the game now has so many players that it can’t reset its leader boards properly.

In June, early designs of upcoming maps included a cosmodrome with several massive buildings full of loot, as Brendan 'PlayerUnknown' Greene tells us, but they've had to be scaled down.

“I see [a level designer] work on the cosmodrome, and the guy who’s working on the buildings - the first round of buildings he did were massive. You could host two or three whole battle royales within these buildings. They had 50 floors, they were gigantic, but they made the area look super cool. We did have to cut them down and make them more manageable so people didn’t run into a building and go ‘Fuck’. So much loot, so little time.”

Sounds exciting, but Greene is keen to emphasize that things are still in a developmental stage where maps are continually changing:

“We’re still blocking out where towns will be, what the various points of interest will be. On the Adriatic map, we have this really cool cosmodrome in mind, with a ruined shuttle half-falling.”

Greene added:

“The Peru map will be the same, a ruined city after a sandstorm, this kind of stuff. We’re trying to give as much variety to our terrains as we can. We’re building a map for game modes. The more variety of content you give modders and creators, the better it’ll be for the game, in the long run.”

Recently a new map release was confirmed, though initial speculation and rumor on its size were abound. It was suggested that the new map would be considerably smaller, at 4 x 4 km, than the current offering, which spans 8 x 8 km. PUBG confirmed in August that they were indeed working on a new map and that it would be the same size as the “Erangel” map at 8 x 8 km.

Concept art of one of the upcoming desert map

Bluehole and PUBG later shook things up with an announcement that they were adding not one, but two new maps: a 4 x 4 km desert map and an 8 x 8 km Mediterranean battleground. The desert map will have slums, villages, and a canyon with a river running through it. The Mediterranean map will contain a dense forest, coastline and a snowy mountain at the center of the map.

PUBG’s future is definitely looking action packed and exciting, now I'm going to head back to the drop plane.

Thanks for reading.

TRC_iDannyCx