I haven't come across a single hacker in PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds. Not an obvious one at least. Maybe that means I need to be more observant, or perhaps it's a testament to the game's anti-cheat system, which is banning more than 6,000 suspected cheaters every day.

That's according to BattlEye, which polices the game's servers. Its official account tweeted yesterday that between 6,000 and 13,000 players are getting their marching orders daily.

On Saturday morning, it had cracked down on nearly 20,000 players within the previous 24-hour period. The "vast majority" of those were from China, where in-game ads recently caused a flood of negative reviews of the game to hit Steam.

In total, the service has blocked 322,000 people, double the number that was reported by the game's creator Brendan Greene, aka PlayerUnknown, last month. That's a rapid rise.

PUBG continues to go from strength to strength: it passed the 2 million concurrent players mark three days ago, and today it peaked at just under a whopping 2.2 million, official Steam stats show. According to SteamSpy, more than 16 million people own it.

Have you come across many hackers while playing?

Those of you familiar with The Joe Rogan Experience—the esteemed podcast hosted by US television star and comedian Joe Rogan—will know Jamie Vernon as the show's sole producer and audio engineer. 

Alongside UFC champion Demetrious Johnson, he's competing in Uproar's The Golden Chicken PUBG tournament today. As such, we caught up with Young Jamie to talk PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds, Twitch streaming, and celebrity guests who're also videogame enthusiasts.

PC Gamer: Have you played in many competitive tournaments?

Jamie Vernon: Not recently. You're familiar with Dr DisRespect, right? I was also in the Blockbuster Video Game Championship in the early '90s, and made it pretty far. I'm not gonna claim a victory, but I did pretty well there. 

What were your thoughts when you heard UFC champ Demetrious Johnson was involved in The Golden Chicken? 

I think it seems like the next progression of things—not that I necessarily saw it for him but it's going to keep happening for other people. Rampage has also been playing it and while he's not involved in this one, I think he'll be involved in tournaments down the line. I know there's a little joke in the PUBG world that it's not esports ready yet but it's still really fun to watch.Do you think you can beat him?

Sure, why not? I'm probably Mighty Mouse's first loss in, like, eight years. He might've lost some PUBG games, but I'm gonna hand him a tournament loss in front of all his Mighty Crew.  

Taking it back a little—what's your relationship with videogames been like over the years? 

I've been playing games since I can remember. My first was probably Mario, I had a Nintendo, then a Super Nintendo. I got a Dreamcast the day it came out, still have it. Over the last couple of years I've turned more towards sports games, but I got a PC that can handle these new videogames about a year ago. I was really getting into VR, and the earliest games I started putting out on Twitch are me doing some VR stuff on Arizona Sunshine and Tilt Brush. 

At some point I realised that this VR PC could also handle some of these awesome games that are coming out and then PUBG popped up. 

What is it about PUBG that you enjoy?

I just got an Apple Watch so I'm going to start tracking my heart rate as I play. It's the excitement that happens when you get down in those final 25-20 or so and you don't know exactly where your enemies are. I'm an audio engineer and the sounds in this game are awesome. 

The location is pretty good, it can be hard at times, but going from dead silence to having a shot come at you and you don't know where it is—it's the whole cat and mouse thing that gets the heart rate right up. Sometimes after one round of playing I have to put it down and be like: Okay, I gotta put this down, I can't play anymore. I need to grab a water and take a break - that feeling is awesome.  

In terms of raising your heart rate—I can only imagine that will be worse when you go into a competitive game. 

Oh yeah,when there's actually something on the line and not just trying to get a win in one round of a game on Wednesday afternoon—this is way different!

I interviewed Terry Crews a while back and he's massive into PUBG at the moment. Do you think you could beat him?

Oh man, I would say always, I love to talk shit when I'm playing videogames. But seriously, it's also surprising when you find out how good certain people are at this stuff. You think that they're only one thing, you have them in a box, and then you find out they excel in many other areas… But, yeah, I would say I could beat him because they don't know how good am I also. I might not be as good as some people that i watch on PUBG on Twitch, but, for sure: I'll take Terry Crews down. 

Who's the biggest celebrity you've played against or streamed with—at PUBG or any game?

I've only just been partnered on Twitch so I've only just started streaming on a semi-consistent basis. I haven't really had time to link up with many people but last week I was playing with JennaMarbles. I've also played with Mighty Mouse quite a lot, and I know some of the top FIFA players online. I've played with some of them and got destroyed, I really wouldn't want to do that in public. 

Does Joe Rogan play video games?

He was avoiding it, for sure. He was really deep into Quake, he's talked about that on the podcast a few times. In the '90s, when he was on News Radio, he had a T1 line installed in his apartment so that he could be faster and have a better ping than anyone else for the most part. Who knows how much that cost, but it had to have cost a lot of money back then. He was way into it and I think he was friends with Fatal1ty online. He said he challenged him at some point 1v1 and said he got rekt, but he's really good at it. 

When Reggie Watts was on the show the other day, I pulled up someone playing Borderlands 2 on Twitch and left it up as Reggie was describing it. Joe was looking at it in a way that seemed like he really wanted to play but knows he shouldn't touch it because it'd make him give up archery. And he really likes archery right now. We'll see what happens when we get this LAN section in our new studio. He might not get too deep but he's probably going to get back into it a little bit.  

While it exists less nowadays, there still exists a degree of negativity towards videogames—that it's not a serious hobby, that it's child's play.

I think it's more of a generational thing. Even back before videogames, the generation before was telling our parents not to be staring at the TV all day. We're probably going to be telling our kids not to be staring at their iPads, that's already happening. 

Who knows what they're going to be telling their kids not to stare at. It's a continuous cycle and while the finger will always get pointed at something, it's very apparent and obvious that videogames have a place here. There's an economy around them that gets people jobs. People are going to school for it now, it's grown way bigger than ever before and it's going to continue to grow. 

Who's the biggest celebrity gamer you've had on the show?

Reggie Watts is a big tech guy. Obviously Mighty Mouse has spoken about games on the show. Kevin Rose was on and we've had Cliffy B on a few times—him and Joe are pretty good friends. 

Joe interviewed you on the podcast shortly after you got back from CES in January. Is staying on top of the goings on the games and tech worlds something you try to do?I try to, yeah. I've been to E3 a few times, CES was a super interesting experience. I didn't realise how big it was before going, it's giant and pretty much takes over the whole of Las Vegas, not just the convention centre. That was crazy, walking around, seeing the new stuff. 

Speaking specifically to your own streaming, where do you see yourself taking it into the future—will it remain a hobbyist thing, or would you ever consider doing it on a professional level?

It's hard to say and I think that it's hard to say for a lot of people. For some folk that I know, it's definitely become their profession. But as more and more people want it to become their profession, it's going to be interesting to see who does rise and stay at the top and refrain from burning out. 

I know of people who almost feel forced to stream, that they have to do it all the time to keep the momentum going. It's an interesting space in general, which is why I'm sort of just investigating and seeing what's happening. I think this will see me stay in the hobbyist space, and, really, I already have a pretty cool job that I'm not really looking to replace. 

And on competitive tournaments—if this one does well do you reckon you might invest more in that spectrum down the line?

Oh for sure! I'm definitely interested. I still see there being more from the VR and AR space in future, and I'm also interested in playing more of a part in that space too. I have dreams of becoming a professional athlete that I'm not letting go of yet.

Alongside UFC champ Demetrious Johnson, Young Jamie is competing in Uproar's The Golden Chicken PUBG tournament today at 2pm PST/10pm BST. If that tickles your fancy, you can check it out over here.  

When I think of desert maps, I picture barren landscapes, wide open expanses, and not much else. That's what I'm half-expecting as I become (I'm told) the first person outside the PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds team to set virtual foot inside the battle royale shooter's upcoming desert map during a visit to the office of developer Bluehole (now PUBG Corp) in South Korea in late September.

What I find instead is a sprawling battle arena crowded with desert trees, cacti, and a surprising number of buildings. It's immediately noticeable how much more variation there is to the terrain than in Erangel, PUBG's current map. There are hills, rises, and ditches in the landscape, which should create lots of opportunities for cover from sniper fire, or alternatively, convenient places to stage an ambush. The varied terrain will make a difference not just for those running around in PUBG but also those driving, I'm told by art director Taeseok Jang, who I chat with over Skype during my visit. Vehicle handling will act and feel much differently depending on whether players are on smooth, paved surfaces or offroading on rough terrain.

I'm not playing a match, just exploring on my own, and the as-yet unnamed desert map is still a work in progress with some textures, features, and even entire locations missing. One large town I can see on the minimap has been removed from the build I'm touring until it's been better optimized, and the zone marked for a military base is currently empty. What is available, however, feels like a natural fit for PUBG's looting, shooting, and driving.

Oh—and climbing, clambering, and vaulting. While I'm exploring the desert, I get to do plenty of that, too.

With Mexico serving as a source of inspiration for the map, it makes sense that I eventually find a colorful wrestling arena, sure to draw a number of fist-fights and melee engagements when players finally get their hands on it (and, I'll wager, some wrestling mask skins from Bluehole's art department).

My favorite locations are three ancient meteor impact craters with small towns inside them, the abandoned shops and homes built right on the sunken crater floor. One such town, with echoes of DayZ, sports the still-burning wreck of a crashed plane. Even with no opponents on the map with me, I can anticipate the tension of looting the buildings in these craters, eyes constantly scanning the high ridge that circles the town for the movement of opportunistic snipers. Even better, I imagine, will be when the blue circle happens to close on one of the crater towns at the end of a match, giving the advantage not to the players peering down from the ridge but to those already hunkered somewhere inside one of the buildings.

Like the map, PUBG's vaulting system is still in an unfinished state, but after just a few attempts at clambering and climbing it begins feeling extremely smooth and kinetic. Running into a church through the front door, I give the back door a miss and instead clamber onto the window ledge and hop out to the ground. Then I climb back in, and repeat the move a few more times. In a small town consisting of a few crumbling shops, I mantle out of one building through a window, vault over a fence, and then leap into window of another building, all while sprinting at top speed. Then I run back the same way, retracing my steps and leaps until I manage to make the entire route feel natural and physical. It's easy to imagine frenzied chases through buildings and alleys, quick and athletic dashes through towns and villages, and hasty escapes from ambushes or thrown grenades using this new movement system.

You can see more exclusive screenshots and read more about the new map, the vaulting system, and my interviews with creative director Brendan Greene, art director Taeseok Jang, CEO of PUBG Corp C.H. Kim, and others, in PC Gamer magazine. For those of you in the UK, it's issue 311, which is on its way to subscribers now and on newsstands on October 19. For readers the U.S., it's issue 299, and will be on sale November 7.

What if PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds were a movie? We're probably going to find out at some point—at 15 million something players, a big film production is just about guaranteed. But we're impatient, so for a glimpse at that inevitable future we contracted videogame writer Walt Williams to imagine for us what a Hollywood adaptation of PUBG would look like. What's the secret story behind the chicken dinner? How will it capitalize on dystopian YA novel trends? How can it be more gamer? 

As a writer and editor, Walt has been creating videogame stories for more than 10 years. He's best known for his work as narrative designer on Spec Ops: The Line, but his credits also include Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel, the upcoming Star Wars Battlefront 2, and many more. He's also just released a book about his experiences in the games industry, so he can add published author to his accomplishments. 

But now we present a new Walt Williams. This Walt, the Hollywood screenwriter, has been tossed an impossible assignment: make a game about 100 people shooting each other on an island into a coherent film. It must be sensational. It must have flawless Brand Synergy. It must appeal to gamers. 

Below, you'll find scattered pages of Walt's PUBG movie. We hope it's filmed exactly as written here whenever the real thing happens.

The rise and rise of PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds continues. Last month it smashed the Steam record for the most concurrent players, surpassing Dota 2's previous best of 1.3 million, and today it hit an even bigger milestone: 2 million concurrent users. Staggering.

The Early Access battle royale shooter hit 2,016,498 players earlier today, according to Steam's official stats page. Just under 14 million players are on Steam right now (and today's peak will likely be just above that), which basically means that one in seven users on the platform are locked into PUBG.

The game has also broken the 15 million owners barrier, data from SteamSpy shows, and is well on its way to 16 million. The graph below shows a definite uptick in people buying it over the past few days:

Clearly, the game's recent server troubles and a Stream of negative reviews (prompted by in-game ads for Chinese players) have not been enough to put people off.

Developer Bluehole announced yesterday that the reset of the game's leaderboards, which heralds the start of a new season, would be delayed by a week. The previous season finished yesterday, but the reset won't happen until October 17 because the team are worried about performance issues. Basically, that means the results of any games before then will not be recorded for the leaderboards.

"Our concurrent users have been increasing rapidly, and we are genuinely concerned that we may not be able to provide you with a comfortable and seamless gaming experience by starting the new season immediately," Bluehole said on a Steam post apologising for the delay.

Demetrious Johnson is the UFC's reigning flyweight champion, and is the sport's highest-rated pound-for-pound fighter. Saturday's victory over Ray Borg suggests 31-year-old Johnson has plenty of fight left in him yet. 

In his spare time, though, the fighter otherwise known as Mighty Mouse plays a lot of PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds. He livestreams on Twitch, often before and after fights, and is taking part in Uproar's The Golden Chicken pro tournament this weekend.

Ahead of that, we caught up with Johnson to talk about PUBG, bonding with his Twitch community, and his plans to livestream professionally when he eventually retires from mixed martial arts.

PC Gamer: You're quite a prolific PUBG Twitch streamer nowadays. On the face of it, livestreaming and MMA seem at odds with one another. 

Demetrious Johnson: They're definitely different but what they both have in common is that you have to be persistent. You have to be persistent with what you're doing to be successful in anything.   

What is it that you enjoy about streaming videogames so much? Honestly, it's interacting with the fans on a different platform. Obviously I've fought for many years, but interacting with fans in mixed martial arts is a little bit different because it's more of a competition. When we talk about videogames, we share the same passion. 

When it came to streaming—I've been gaming for a long time, way before I ever started fighting. It's one of my biggest passions. And now I can share that passion with other fans via Twitch, it just makes sense. 

Tell me about your relationship with videogames, then, what were your first games and your favourites?

The original Nintendo was the first games system I ever played. 3D World Runner, Snake Rattle 'n' Roll, The Legend of Zelda, The Legend of Zelda 2—those games were always really close to my heart. As I got older, I moved onto the Super Nintendo, and it's my favourite system of all time. A buddy of mine just picked me up a Super Nintendo classic.

And now you play a lot of PUBG. 

I do, yes. 

Would you say that it's your favourite game at the moment?

Yeah, hands-down, favourite game at the moment. There's so much you can do in the game. Sometimes I just jump around, I wanna run custom games, I want to jump in a car, honk the horn, and then run somebody over. 

Maybe I'll battle someone one-on-one to grab an airdrop—I just have so many options and I truly enjoy that. I love having that level of freedom in games, instead of being penned in without choices. 

Conor McGregor is a big deal in your field, and is really big here in the UK. Do you think if he played PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds you could beat him at that? 

At PUBG? I fucking better be able to! I'd like to think I can, absolutely.

What other games do you most enjoy streaming?

PlayerUnknown's is my favourite one at the moment. But I also love Marvel vs Capcom: Infinite, that's another one I like to stream. Final Fantasy 14: A Realm Reborn - that's a little bit low key, not a lot of my viewers like that game. 

But I must say, PUBG is definitely my favourite game at the moment. The fans can interact with it, they enjoy it, and so do I. 

In terms of preparation—are there any similarities between getting yourself ready for an MMA fight, and preparing for a livestream?

I've never done a livestream of me fighting in the UFC or training or anything like that but I have livestreamed before going over to the arena to fight. But at UFC 197, I believe it was, I went to fight Henry Cejudo, and I was streaming Dark Souls 3. I said I'd be right back as I had to go fight, I fought, won, then came back and jumped right back on the stream. I've done that a few times before. 

Dark Souls as a series is amazing. And it's an amazing game to stream. But I don't do any of that speed challenge bullshit, it's just too damn hard and takes too much time.  

You're competing in Uproar's Golden Chicken tournament. How are you feeling about that?

Oh, I'm very excited. This is my second competition and obviously this is one of my favourite games. I'm looking forward to it and I'm looking forward to go out there and kill everybody in the woods. Nobody can beat the shadow, the Warrior in the Woods.  

You're ranked as the number one pound-for-pound UFC in the world. Have you got what it takes to become the number one chicken dinner winner in the world? 

I don't know, that's a long shot. You've got some really great, really talented guys out there at the moment. You've got guys who're playing these games professionally, eight hours a day. Videogames for me are a release, I wish I could that amount of time into it but I don't know if I could ever be better than them. 

What I will say is this: There's not another athlete out there that puts as many hours into the gym, and as many hours into videogames that's as good as me. 

Who's the biggest celebrity you've ever played at PUBG?I'd say Rampage Jackson.

And you won I take it?

I won a couple of his games, he won a couple and knocked me out a few times. I won more games overall. I'm too good.

On your Twitch bio you mention that upon retirement from MMA you'd like to pursue videogame livestreaming on a professional basis. Is this still something you're interested in?

Yeah, livestreaming is something I'd love to pick up when I retire. The thing about mixed martial arts is that you can only do it for so long before your body gives out. 

If I'm streaming and entertaining, you can do that forever—so long as your mind is clear, your brain is switched on, and you want to entertain. I don't see why not, I can provide some on-air talent, play some games and we can take it from. 

I take it you don't plan to retire from MMA any time soon, though. 

No, I'm not going to retire soon. When the time comes, if I have teammates that I can help get to this level of professionalism, yeah, I'll stick around and help them. But once I'm done that'll be me.

Thanks so much for your time, Demetrious. 

Awesome, thank you, have a wonderful day.