It looks like PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds has turned something of a corner - it's back up to over one million concurrent players on Steam for the first time since October.

PUBG has steadily lost players on Valve's platform since an incredible January 2018 peak of 3.2 million concurrent players.

After November 2018 saw a low of 895,650 peak concurrent players, this week has seen a significant increase, with, at the time of publication, 1.1 million concurrent players. It's the first time PUBG's peak concurrent player count has risen since January 2018. All this and we haven't even mentioned the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One versions.

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Vikendi, the much anticipated fourth map for PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds, launches on PC test servers today before a full launch on 19th December, with a console release set for January. Based on a series of short preview videos I was shown earlier in the week and the following interview with Dave Curd, world art director at PUBG Corporation, I can safely say it's the battle royale's most creative and ambitious map yet.

The videos opened with a squad of PUBG players trudging through deep snow, leaving a trail of footprints behind them as a light scattering of snow fell from the sky. This then moved onto a flyby of a couple of brand new locations including a run-down, dinosaur-themed amusement park and the rusty interior of an abandoned cosmodrome, complete with old missiles and worn-out machinery.

This exaggerated and almost light-hearted approach to the level design may be an attempt to win over some of the Fortnite crowd, but there's still plenty of scope in the map for more traditional PUBG arenas. Fans of earlier maps should be excited to hear I was shown several shots of a large town that featured multiple multi-storey buildings. This will be perfect for a more realistic urban combat environment, akin to some of the larger towns in Miramar.

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PUBG is getting a new map today, a snow-drenched 6x6 play space called Vikendi.

Vikendi is out now on the game's PC test servers, then launches proper on PC on 19th December. It hits the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One versions of the battle royale in January.

Vikendi includes the new snow mobile vehicle and the new G36C assault rifle. Size wise it's designed to fit snugly between Sanhok and Erangel.

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The maker of PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds has declared its high-profile, major bug-fixing campaign over and announced a change in direction for development.

In an open letter to players published on Steam, executive producer Taeseok Jang admitted the developer, PUBG Corp. had "overlooked issues that matter to you" as it focused on providing new content quickly "while supplementing battle royale gameplay". PUBG Corp. has "reflected a lot on our mistakes," Taeseok Jang added.

As a result, PUBG Corp. has shifted priorities for its 2019 roadmap. Now, build stability and quality are "our most important value", ahead of battle royale gameplay and new content.

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As Eurogamer reported last week, PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds comes out on PlayStation 4 in December. PUBG Corp. confirmed the news today with a release date of 7th December.

The PS4 version, which arrives a year after the hit Steam battle royale title launched on Xbox One, includes exclusive Uncharted and The Last of Us-themed in-game items. If you pre-order you get Nathan Drake's outfit from the Uncharted series and Ellie's backpack from The Last of Us. They look like this:

PUBG supports High Dynamic Range (HDR) for the PS4 Pro version, and launches on PS4 with three maps (Erangel, Miramar and Sanhok), the ranked system, event mode and achievements.

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PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds comes out on PlayStation 4 in December - one year after it hit Xbox One as a timed console exclusive.

Video game analyst Daniel Ahmad took to ResetEra to say the battle royale game was coming to Sony's console next month, and Eurogamer understands this to be true.

PUBG's arrival on PS4 doesn't come as a huge surprise, after it was leaked by the Korean ratings board and, more recently, Sony's servers spat out PUBG images (as spotted by a user on PSNProfiles).

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PUBG Corp is currently engaged in a substantial effort to fix its game. I mean this quite literally: there's an ongoing campaign called FIX PUBG which is tracking the team's efforts to combat bugs in a game notorious for jankiness.

Despite this, players are (perhaps unsurprisingly) still experiencing issues with the game. Only yesterday, the developer had to give out free in-game beanies and currency to apologise for issues with PC servers, and now PUBG Corp has publicly apologised for yet another error. We only need one more problem to make a hat-trick of critical failures for the week. Wouldn't hat be appropriate.

This time, it's the game's Event Mode which is causing PUBG Corp some grief. In a tweet from the support account, PUBG Corp announced that the Event Mode would not be playable due to a "critical error". The "Platoon" event for this week - a brand new 50 v 50 mode with each team divided into five 10-person squads - will not be re-appearing next week, and will return "at a later date".

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It's been a bumpy few days for PUBG players on PC. Yesterday, following routine live server maintenance, many players experienced difficulties connecting to servers, with several receiving a message telling them that "network lag" had been detected.

To smooth things over a little, PUBG Corp. is now giving PC players some in-game items and currency to make up for the disruption. Players who log in before 5pm PDT on 23rd October (or 12pm GMT on 24th October) will be able to claim the black beanie with headphones, along with 20,000 battle points for players to spend in-game. Now everyone can be beanie buddies, hooray!

Meanwhile, in slightly less janky PUBG news, PC update 23 has been released on test servers, and is bringing a variety of changes to the game. There's a new handgun gun called the Skorpion which looks like a half-way house between a pistol and an uzi, and should be good for close-range gunfights in the early stages of a match. It certainly has a sting in its tail.

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Last week I reported on the backlash to a recent update to PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds that added automatic server selection to the game.

PC update 22, which came out earlier in October, made it so your server or region was decided automatically depending on the player's local region.

But it didn't work properly, with players reporting they'd been shunted into regions not their own - and suffered a poor online experience as a result.

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A recent update to PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds ditched the server selection the battle royale game used to employ in favour of region locking - something players had vociferously called for for months.

However, PUBG Corp., the developer of the game, has since been hit by a backlash to the update, with the game's western players calling for Chinese players only to be region-locked.

PC update 22, which came out earlier this week, made it so your server or region was decided automatically depending on the player's local region.

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