When we heard reports that the Playerunknown’s Battlegrounds test patch adding climbing & vaulting also digs a pond in a woodland glade, we sent RPS wild swimming correspondent Alice O’Connor onto the test server to investigate.>

Bad news: The new pond is rubbish for swimming.

Good news: If you’re seeking somewhere for a nice walk, to sit and chat with a close friend, for a tense final battle, or to use as cover as you cross what was one a wide flat plain of certain death, it’s really quite nice. I hope more of Plunk Island is revisited and reworked like this. (more…)

Update: The developers have extended the test for another day and added support for squad play.>

The long-promised climbing & vaulting system coming to Playerunknown’s Battlegrounds will debut on the test servers in a few short hours, developers PUBG Corp. announced today. For us in the UK it’ll be at 2am on Tuesday, or it’s tonight in America. The test period will be brief, giving only 24 hours to check it out – and only in solo mode. We’ll also get to play with Plunkbat’s updated ballistics, which will change a fair bit about how different guns work at different ranges. I am excited for a day of Plunkbat where I understand how neither movement nor shooting work. (more…)

The continued clotting amalgamation of the Steam Charts, with CODWARs and AssCreed Oranges mysteriously occupying multiple spaces, is having frankly dangerous effects on the column. No The Witcher 3! No GTA V! And H1Z1 seems to have been entirely forgotten by the ages! What is a running joke to do? (more…)

If you’ve got enough Playerunknown’s Battlegrounds appetite for desert, you might be interested to know that Brendan ‘Playerunknown’ Greene has released four new screenshots of the upcoming desert map. Personally, I’m already planning my sand-based shenanigans.

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Bluehole Studio are now best known for Playerunknown’s Battlegrounds, but the mega-hit murderfest is actually the black sheep of their family. Bluehole are mostly into MMORPGs, having started with Tera and Devilian, and this will resume with their next game. Today Bluehole announced Ascent: Infinite Realm, a magical steampunk MMORPG with jetpacks, mechs, airships, wizards, dragons, and Avatar-y magical floating rocks. Amongst all this, also expect realm vs. realm aerial warfare, and a peaceful life building your own estate. Have a look in this trailer: (more…)

Do you find solace through memetics? Which enormously popular game you like is also liked by lots of other people? What else might form the triangle of your desire? Cast aside your romantic delusions, and delve into the acquisitive mire that is the Steam Charts. (more…)

Cheating is as old as gaming, and it’s even more frustrating with multiplayer video games where we trust in computers to keep everyone following the same rules. While cheaters might never be stopped — especially now it can be a lucrative business for cheatsmiths — we must still fight them and do what we can. Playerunknown’s Battlegrounds can do more to combat the rapscallions, the developers have conceded, and today they’re rolling out more anti-cheat measures. Another cheat-fighting update will follow next week, and PUBG Corp. say that in general they intend to take stronger actions. If we can’t climb and vault yet, at least let us Plunk in peace. (more…)

Well, heck. Playerunknown’s Battlegrounds has delayed the first public test its new climbing and vaulting system, which was due to start this week. I had even ordered new headphones especially for intense nights of parkour around Pochinki. Plunkbat’s developers don’t say when we’ll get to flip out, only that the test servers aren’t quite stable enough for long stretches of testing (and presumably they’ll be in high demand too). This is a shame, as I’ve been so eager for more agility in this wonderful (and wonderfully daft) game. But hey, the devs did say the other day that Plunkbat is still on course to leave early access in late December. Fingers crossed this doesn’t delay that. (more…)

This is Playstyle Royale, where I head into Playerunknown s Battlegrounds and try to win my chicken dinner while adhering to arbitrary rules. Tonight, I m hoping to share my supper with RPS s very own Alec Meer – who has never played the game before.

As if that didn t make things hard enough, this week s rule is that Alec is the only one who can use his weapon.

That means that this week you get two after-action reports, with my version on the first page and Alec s on the second.

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They’ve talked before about getting it down before the year’s out, but we’ve now got a more precise window for when industry-disrupting death circus Playerunknown’s Battlegrounds will become a full-fat PC game release. The devs last night made the spooktacular announcement that they’re now planning on putting out version 1.0 in late December. In other words, it’s sayonara to Steam Early Access after what (by December) will have been an eyewateringly successful 10 months in open development, and hello to whatever the hell ‘gone gold’ means in terms of game development means these days.

No doubt we’ll see various known and unknown tweaks and additions come the day, but of course the Very Big Deal for PUBG 1.0 is the release of the new desert map. (more…)