Flavour of the month game, Player Unknown’s Battlegrounds (PUBG), has been a huge success since its early access release in March. After only being out for 4 months with their 4th monthly update out yesterday, here are some of the good and the bad things that have been happening recently with the battle arena game.

NEW RECORD

As of just last month, PUBG beat the record for the most played non-Valve game on steam. It overtook the likes of Grand Theft Auto V and Fallout 4 with 481,291 unique players at the peak. Not surprisingly without the non-Valve part of this new title they are not the record holders, they are in 3rd. PUBG places behind Counter-Strike Global-Offensive in 2nd with 850,485 players as of April last year and Dota 2 in 1st with a massive 1,291,328 players from March of 2016 as well.

Developers of Player Unknown’s Battlegrounds, have recently come under fire from the game’s community over a ban they dished out to a player who ‘Stream Sniped’ popular streamers ‘Shroud‘ and ‘Summit1g.’ Stream sniping occurs when someone gains information about the player streaming by watching their stream and then using that to an unfair advantage. This has only recently become an issue with the rise of streaming on Twitch and YouTube, so no one really knows how to deal with it. Following the ban the developers have responded to the backlash they received as some have been claiming they cannot prove that the player in question had been watching the stream. The statement below was released on Twitter explaining how they are able to track players and their activity to ensure fair-play.

MICRO TRANSACTIONS

One feature that has angered some fans is the introduction of micro-transactions. Now we all know how things change with early access games and PUBG is no different. The developers originally promised there would be no paid content before the official release of the game, however, the purpose is to raise money for the Gamescom PUBG Invitational competitive tournament, that will be held later in the month in Germany. This may not be a problem for most people but for those of you susceptible to gambling be warned. The system will resemble the case opening with paid keys of Counter-Strike, the crates can be bought with in game ‘Battle Points’ (BP) but the keys for the tournament crates must be purchased for $2.50 each.

NEW FEATURES

Some new player animations and features have been announced and will be added to the game soon. These new features include a FOV (Field of View) range slider for 1st person view as well as a rolling animation. The FOV slider will allow players to increase or decrease how much they can see in front of them while in first person view. The rolling animation appears to be the animation that will occur when a players goes prone while strafing.

With the game still in alpha, expect more new things to come from the team at Bluehole before the release at the end of this year. Keep up to date with all the news as it happens on Player Unknown‘s and Play Battlegrounds‘ Twitter.