Fast approaching new heights in esports, PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds (PUBG) has had a busy few months.
PUBG held its first esports tournament at Gamescom in Germany at the end of August and, while it had some issues, the event showed that the game developers and the community want this smash hit to be one of the top esports games. Viewer numbers on popular streaming website Twitch.tv shot through the roof, dethroning games like League of Legends and DOTA 2 from the top of the standings.
While I’m on the topic of dethroning games, I should mention that PUBG’s growth has been substantial as of late.
Just recently, the game surpassed 1,000,000 concurrent players on game hosting platform Steam. Since breaking that milestone, PUBG has remained consistently at the top of the most-played game list, becoming the second most played in the world, behind League of Legends.
Seeing as how the game is only in early access right now and isn’t set to be fully released until the end of 2017, the success has come as a shock for many.
A new PUBG update—the first one in a month—was recently released, only adding to the momentum that the game has.
The update has the much-requested First Person Perspective leaderboards as well as an entire new map setting, which is in fog. The fog, as fog tends to do, vastly restricts the view distance of players and has thrown a curveball in that snipers are basically void.
As one of the update’s last major features, a new gun, the Mini-14, was added as the first new non-care package exclusive gun for almost four months.
The growth and the rate at which the game has progressed since being released in March of this year is remarkable. The amount of content and care that Bluehole—the game’s developers—are putting into PUBG proves it has a promising future as both an esport and as a casual game for millions to enjoy.