As exclusively revealed during the PC Gaming Show at this year's E3, the ability to vault, climb, and dive through windows is coming to PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds. Now, one of the game's programmers has shared some work-in-progress footage that shows how the new animations are coming along.

What might seem like a small addition to PUBG has scope to grossly alter strategy as it stands. Being able to throw yourself over and therefore behind walls while being pursued, for example, could mark the difference between life and death; while snipers stand to access better vantage points by reaching highers up nests.

As you can see there, players will be able to stall vaults mid-animation which will definitely come in handy when facing off against the aforementioned opportunist snipers. 

Again, the above is marked as a 'work-in-progress'. And while we don't as yet know exactly which update vaulting, climbing and window-diving are coming to PUBG, there's still no sign of this ultra-cool maneuvering:

The highlight of my Battlegrounds career was the time my squad held out in the underground military bunker against multiple enemies with only crossbows. It wasn't some zany challenge we had set for ourselves—just an incredibly shitty string of loot luck. Yet, amid the twangs of crossbow strings snapping, we persevered. One squad retreated sporting a few new feathers in their caps, and we eradicated another one entirely. I'll never forget the flood of "oh my god" and laughter when we emerged from the bunker, stole a car, and actually made it away with our lives. That was months ago, but every time we play I call us the Crossboyz.

It might not have been a moment as gif-worthy as jumping a bike into a house's second story window and killing its occupants, or those people who discovered that hiding in overturned cars is a surprisingly viable tactic. But Battlegrounds is so damn good at churning out an endless stream of small anecdotes just like these, and so many of them are hilarious.

That's why we want to hear your best Battlegrounds stories. Regale us with tales of bold heroics, of insane car stunts, or the clever tactics that produced surprising outcomes. We want them all. Share your stories in the comments below and we'll round up our favorites and shower you with glory next week.

The internet is vast and full of streams. The prevalence of YouTube and Twitch ensure that more gaming silliness is being captured and shared than ever. People are still doing amazing work with Source's film making tools and The International 7 produced its share of amusing moments. Here are some of the videos and gifs that tickled us this week.

Rule breaker

An0nymoose, the creator of demented videos like We Like To Party continues to do fine work.

Better luck next time

Via nicky-and-skittles on r/gaming.

That crowd reaction

Valve announced a new game at The International 7 to... let's say a mixed response.

Also at The International

One of Dota 2's most loved players takes on an AI at The International 7. The contender walkouts at 1:36 are perfect. Head to 7:32 to watch the actual contest.

Meanwhile, in War Thunder

Graceful tank action via genericc.

Monster hunter pro skater

Our favourite Witcher 3 mod of the week.

How to stick a landing

Early Access battle royale shooter PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds is still quickly climbing the charts in terms of sales and player counts, but also on the rise are controversy, complaints, and negative reviews on Steam. Along with no small amount of hubbub over PUBG's policy of banning players for perceived stream-sniping and team-killing (even when someone had a seemingly good reason for the latter), the introduction of paid loot crates for cosmetic items continues to be a big point of contention.

The community backlash is no surprise: the idea of selling items in an unfinished Early Access game typically results in a wave of unhappiness from gaming communities (see Ark's paid DLC expansion). There's also the fact that Brendan Greene stated a few months ago that no monetization would occur during PUBG's Early Access period. Anytime a system goes from free to paid (after launch, Greene has said there will "probably" be no more free crates at all) there's bound to be a lot of unhappiness.

Greene explained his turnaround on a paid crate system for Early Access, saying in the August update post: "While our intention was and still is to add the full feature to the game when we move into actual release, we do need to test it prior to launch and at Early Access so that it is stable and ready to be fully introduced to our community."

For the most part, the community seems unmoved by Greene's explanation. While it's nothing like the dramatic review-bombing we've seen with other games, PUBGs recent Steam review score has slipped from Mostly Positive to Mixed in the past 30 days, which is a change from about 75% positive reviews to around 65%. While many of the reviews express positive opinions about the game itself, most of these recent thumbs-downs cite the paid crates as the main reason.

"Although I love the core game, I can't recommend it to anyone now as the developer has broken one of the most paramount promises made during EA," says one Steam reviewer, who has played 135 hours of PUBG. "They said no paid content until release, now they're introducing keys, needed to open crates, which are purchased with real money, akin to CSGO."

"Don't let BlueHole pull the same things other early access devs have," reads another review. "Even though this game is wonderful and has the potential to be a staple in PC gaming, we have to let them know we won't accept these practices."

"Fun and addicting game but I'm jumping on the boycott bandwagon with the way they are going about loot crates / cosmetic items," reads a review from a player with nearly 90 hours of play. "If they added the ability to receive the same loot by grinding i would tell everyone to buy it."

On the PUBG subreddit, one of the highest upvoted posts, published two weeks ago, is titled 'JUST SAY NO to real-money keys."

"I don't think people getting these things are getting an advantage. I don't think my gameplay is affected by other people having them, or me not having them," the post reads. The poster laments that unlocking the schoolgirl outfit they want would require a potentially sizable investment of cash due to crates containing a single item, not a set, and the random nature of the crate's contents allow for finding duplicates instead of the costume you might be looking for.

"I know some of you play games like CSGO or whatever and think a system like this is reasonable because you're used to it, but it's not," the post continues. "In those games, it's also possible to get items for free. In this game, it will not be possible to get anything for free." (Emphasis theirs).

There are currently some 2,500 comments on the post, which has over 14,000 upvotes. Not everyone agrees, mind you: some point out that microtransactions are voluntary, and no one needs to actually buy keys for the crates. Others fear the crate system will lead, as it did for CS:GO, to a swarm of gambling sites, bot accounts, and scammers hoping to cash in on valuable items.

One redditor is completely fine with microtransactions, even in Early Access, and sounds perfectly willing to spend money—just not like this. "I'm all for selling cosmetics," the comment reads. "I'm completely against selling cosmetics using an RNG slot machine approach like crates & keys. Simply sell me the full outfit for $15 please."

And, for some who haven't yet bought PUBG, this controversy may be resulting in some hesitation about purchasing it. "I've been watching this game and was planning on potentially buying it after its release," one comment reads, "but here I'm seeing the birth of the usual EA pattern.

"Everyone was hailing this as 'EA done right'," the commenter continues, "but I'm skeptical, as that's what they always say."

Another popular Playerunknown's Battlegrounds streamer has been banned from the game, for yet another bizarre and dubious reason. As reported by Kotaku, the streamer known as Destiny was out cruising around in his truck when he came upon some enemy players and ran them down, as one does. Vehicular homicide is a common (and commonly hilarious) way to dispatch enemies in PUBG, after all. But in this case, it earned him the boot. 

The problem with Destiny's kill spree is that it came as the result of a glitch that prevents houses from rendering for some players in a game, which leaves non-glitched players utterly exposed and helpless, without even realizing it. Basically, you're crouched behind a wall, peeking carefully out a window, relatively safe and sound—but to a player experiencing the glitch, it looks like you're sitting out in the open like a big ol' lump of "Shoot Me." And it's not that the walls are invisible—they're just not there at all.

Even though Destiny apparently didn't do anything to trigger the glitch, he obviously took advantage of it, which is a hard "no" in the PUBG rules of conduct: "Do not exploit bugs or glitches: If you find a bug or a glitch in the game that provides an unfair advantage, let us know about it instead of using the exploit for your own benefit." And it's clear that he was well aware of what he was doing, as he acknowledges that his victims are actually in houses and says multiple times that he's going to be banned.   

Naturally, his banning led to (another) uproar amongst the ranks of the PUBG community. Some players think the ban is justified, others complain about bias in the distribution of bans (Grimmz's demonstration of how to take advantage of clipping to kill people underwater, for instance, apparently went unpunished), and of course there's the very big and obvious question of what he was supposed to do when he encountered the glitch. Yes, he clearly took enthusiastic advantage of it, but is he supposed to just not kill anyone, or quit the game outright, because of something that's completely not his fault? 

Regardless of where you stand on the morality of the thing, at least a couple of redditors pointed out that PUBG is an Early Access game, meaning that bugs are all but inevitable. That makes banning players for encountering them look a little iffy. "People are paying to beta test your game and stumbling across a serious bug at fault of the developers," a redditor named Cynoxious wrote. "It is perfectly fine that he attempted to run people over the reason being it gives a full showcase of what this glitch accomplishes."   

The whole point of beta testing, which in most ways is synonymous with Early Access, is to find ways to break and exploit a game before it's release to the public. I can't argue with a serious face that Destiny was trying to get some thorough bug-testing done during this road-rage escapade (although he does at one point describe the video as "a PSA, so the devs fix their fucking game"), but that really is how these things work: Testers make active efforts to throw a wrench into the works in any way they can, so that unusual situations the developers may not have considered get caught. 

The trouble here is that Early Access is different from conventional betas in one big way, that being that people have to pay for it. And when a game is purchased, it comes with an expectation that it's going to work as advertised. Protecting those people from shenanigans is presumably a big part of the harsh penalties meted out for taking advantage of bugs, and it's no doubt well-intentioned. But whether it's reasonable is highly questionable—and more to the point, it's increasingly looking like more trouble than it's worth.

First-person servers change everything in PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds, so reckons Ian Birnbaum, however until now doing so meant playing exclusively in the game's Solo or Duo queues. Now, first-person servers are available in all game modes. 

They're also now available worldwide, as developer Bluehole announced earlier on Twitter.

As you can see there, Bluehole suggests first-person leaderboards across all regions are en route, while this week's update has now been deployed to the Live Server. 

In case you missed it yesterday, PUBG's Week 20 update addresses a number of bugs—not least one which occasionally disable voice chat on the Starting Island—introduces some optimisations, and lets dead players view their still-living teammates' markers on both the mini and world maps. 

In light of PUBG's recent stream-sniping furore, Chris caught up with a selection of game devs, streamers, and stream-snipers who in turn shared their views of the practice. Here's an interesting snippet from that: 

"'You have to keep in mind a few things,' says Kripp about Hearthstone snipers. 'I changed my username on Battle.net several times, even throughout [a long period of being stream-sniped], and I do often, not always, but almost every day I stream with a delay. Now the delay is fairly short, rarely do I have it over ten seconds, but if I have a five second delay one day and then the next day I have a twenty second delay, then you're just not going to be able to queue against me because you don't know when I'm queuing.'

"Even with those measures, Kripp has found the problem persists. 'I have been experiencing, in the last few months, even with my efforts, playing against the same players every night in some cases. I remember throughout almost a full month, like a quarter of my losses were to the same person. Right? The same guy queuing against me like every day or every second day. Just absolutely ridiculous.'"