Hot on the heels of volcanic Season 9 map Paramo, PUBG Corp is introducing yet another new map in Season 10 - and this one's all about city living. Or dying, perhaps.

Available now on PC test servers, Season 10 adds a dense urban map called Haven. It's a 1x1 area featuring 32 players set in the heart of the American rust belt. Despite its small size, players will find distinct areas including carbon steelworks, coal yards, an industrial zone, residential zone, overpass and docks. It's a seasonal map, however, meaning it will only stick around for Season 10 - and it can only be played in duos (or you can go it alone as a one-person duo). As the matches are faster, you can expect to receive approximately 70 per cent of the BP you normally would for full-length matches on larger maps.

As the map promises plenty of verticality, a new emergency parachute item is being introduced to help players navigate the highways and tall buildings of Haven. These don't open automatically, so remember to activate the parachute before you go splat. Oh, and they're single-use only.

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PUBG is getting a new "Framerate Priority" mode that pushes the battle royale to 60fps with 1920 x 1080 resolution on some consoles.

Framerate Priority is added to PUBG alongside the October 9.1 update, which is due out on consoles on 29th October. This only applies to the PlayStation 4 Pro and Xbox One X versions of the game, not base consoles.

Framerate Priority will also be available when PUBG is played on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X, the developers said. "After rigorous testing, we're pleased to say that the game performance is extremely smooth and stable, with faster loading and little to no frame drops thanks to the power of next-gen," the developers said in a blog post.

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I can't really keep track of all the battle royale seasons at this point, but in any case, we're now at Season 9 for PUBG - and you can expect some real fireworks in this one as it introduces volcanic map Paramo.

Paramo is described by PUBG Corp as the game's "first dynamic map", and the latest teaser trailer finally gives us an extended look at its landscapes, although exactly what dynamic means is still up for debate. Some speculate the map will be procedurally generated for each match, which makes sense in the context of the trailer and PUBG Corp's description of a "dynamic landscape [that] will keep you guessing each drop". Others think it may be closer to Karakin's Black Zones, which flatten everything in their path - including buildings. A slightly wackier theory, as explained by PlayerIGN, predicts Paramo's hook is actually time travel. Either way, it's volcanic and dynamic.

PUBG Corp started teasing the map in late September by sending a bunch of stone tablets to influencers, and later followed up with a lore video hinting Paramo is actually the location of the fountain of youth. There have also been several hints pertaining to helicopters being added in the new season, in both a letter accompanying the tablets, a dev tweet and several teaser videos, so it seems likely the vehicles could be introduced as part of Season 9.

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The latest PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds leak purports there's a new game mode on the way.

Called Vostok, it's been described as a "mix of FPS and Auto Battler genre". In a new video, leaker PlayerIGN suggests the new mode is a significant departure for the battle royale format, pitting players against each other in a range of 1v1 situations with limited spawns. The last player standing - in true battle royale tradition - will be the victor.

As reported by PCGN, Vostok gives players just three lives. They will rotate through numerous individual encounters - winning money and the chance to upgrade your gear with each successful round - until there's just one player left. The better your performance in each round, the better your bonuses and rewards.

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PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds, PUBG Corporation's genre-defining battle royale experience, is free-to-play this weekend on Steam.

Battlegrounds - or PUBG, to its friends - inspired a wave of similarly styled last-man-standing games following its enormously successful early access release in 2017, and while it has long-since been overshadowed by the likes of Fortnite and Apex Legends, it still enjoys a healthy audience, welcoming well over 200,000 players a month on Steam according to SteamCharts.

Since its initial release, PUBG's 100-player skirmishes have expanded to cover six maps - a tutorial area, original location Erangel, the desert expanse of Miramar, the North African Karakin, the rainforest-themed Sanhok, and the snow-covered Vikendi - with the latter having received a major makeover earlier this year as part of the ongoing Season 7.

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Having been introduced on consoles last month, bots are now making their debut on PUBG's PC test servers as part of update 7.2, and I think it's fair to say some players aren't very happy about it.

As explained by PUBG Corp, bots are being introduced in public matchmaking as a way to provide new players with easier targets and tackle the widening skill gap. Some have speculated, however, that it could also be a way to bulk up lobbies and reduce queue times due to declining player numbers.

In any case, PUBG Corp says the ratio of bots to humans is dynamic, meaning you'll likely see fewer bots at a higher level - although this also depends on the matchmaking pool for each server. Bot actions are currently limited to basics such as walking, running, crouching and shooting, but further actions are due to be added at a later date (including swimming, so watch out).

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PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds has come a long way. From Steam early access phenomenon to popularising the battle royale genre, PUBG has enjoyed millions of players across multiple platforms.

On PC, though, PUBG's peak appears behind it. It has an astonishing all-time peak of 3.2m concurrent players on Steam, but that was achieved two years ago, in January 2018. Nowadays, PUBG peaks in the 600,000s.

This is not to say PUBG is done and dusted. It remains a massive game on Steam, the third-most popular game on Valve's platform, in fact, behind only Dota 2 and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. And the developers of PUBG continue to update the game in a bid to keep its playerbase interested and active. Recently, we heard about the experimental Bluehole mode, a way of playing the game that forces "circle squatters" to keep moving. The latest development is a brand new map called Karakin that has something that sounds very much like Bluehole Mode, but with a twist. It's called the Black Zone, and it levels buildings. The idea is it keeps players on edge, discourages camping and gets everyone moving - all across one of the game's smallest maps.

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PUBG's season 6 is upon us (don't worry, I've lost track too), and with it PUBG Corp is introducing a significant amount of new content. This includes a new map and weapons - at the cost of saying goodbye to Vikendi for a while, as the map has been temporarily removed from public matchmaking.

According to the patch notes, new map Karakin is a small 2x2km island providing "the tension of Miramar combined with the pace of Sanhok" for 64 players at a time. There's a mixture of long-range sniping in the mountains, tense urban combat, and claustrophobic underground scuffles to keep players on their toes.

A couple of features make this map stand out from the crowd: the first being sticky bombs - a throwable which can be used on breach points to root out campers. Equally, campers can use them to create windows, while explorers may find them useful in discovering the map's secret areas. A little something for everyone.

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Over the last three days, PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds has been testing a new feature to prevent players from camping in the middle of the safe zone without engaging competitors.

"Land, loot, and camp in the circle for the rest of the match no more," the team stated in a recent blog post. "Circle squatters that felt safe not to engage the enemy will now be forced to keep it moving as a second blue zone is being added to the existing circle. The new 'inner blue zone' will be both a camping deterrent and an indicator of where the next circle will be."

Dubbed the Bluehole mode, the team has been trialling a second blue zone that appears within the safe one. This inner blue circle is the same size and position as the safe zone that proceeds it, and it'll damage players camping in the Inner Blue Zone at the same rate as that of the next Blue Zone phase.

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Dataminers think they have uncovered evidence that a clan system is on its way to PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds on PC and console.

Known leaker PlayerIGN has outlined a number of secrets squirrelled away in PUBG's game files (thanks, The Loadout), and believes they've found evidence that a clan system - which rolled out for mobile players last year - is set to come to other platforms, too.

While it's unclear when, precisely, the system will go live for PC and consoles, PlayerIGN believes clans will cost 5,000 battle points - which is a pretty hefty amount, let's be honest - and may be linked to PUBG's upcoming ranked mode, as there's reportedly a label called "no clan" for the leaderboard. They've also unveiled that clan names will be limited to 2-15 characters, and the shortened tag offering just 2-4 characters.

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