Last year, Tencent unsuccessfully pursued the acquisition of PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds developer Bluehole/PUBG Corp. In November, the tech giant secured the rights to officially distribute the battle royale 'em up in China. 

This version is yet to launch in the region, however Bloomberg (via VG24/7) reports Tencent has since helped law enforcement agents clamp down on cheat software manufacturers.  

According to Bloomberg, Tencent has worked with police to uncover somewhere in the region of 30 cases—having arrested around 120 people in the process. The accused are thought to have either created or have been caught advertising cheat software that allows players to perform illegal maneuvers, such as the ability to see through walls, view the battlefield from above, or auto-target enemies. 

The report also notes the accused have used the game's leaderboards as a means of promoting cheat applications—one advertisement asked players to "maintain control and keep your kills within 15 people per game" so as not to get caught—and that those convicted in the past have served jail time. 

At the turn of the year, PUBG Corp celebrated three million concurrent players, however underscored the news by revealing it has handed out 1.5 million cheater bans since the game's Early Access launch last March.

The patch note is an underappreciated art form. Among the dry details of damage buffs and bug fixes are occasionally brilliant puns or revelatory details about the absurd complexity of videogames. Dwarf Fortress is the undisputed king of unintentionally hilarious updates ("Cleaned up the bear situation"), but we've also written about some of the all-time greats from Ark: Survival Evolved, Rust, and World of Warcraft.

Absurdity is always with us, though, and the good gods know we've needed every laugh we could find in 2017. To find the very best ones, I dove through the 2017 community updates and patch notes from all kinds of games. Deep, open-world survival games are always good for a laugh. After all, they model systems like pooping and sleeping, and a mention of "shitting the bed" is already 90 percent of a joke.

H1Z1

12/13

• Blood effects have been changed back to the classic mist effect. 

12/7

• Toxic Cargo Pants have been updated to be more consistent 

11/15 

• Shooting from a passenger seat should no longer result in hitting a teammate in the backseat. 

8/29 

• Old rocks have been removed and replaced with new, varied rock formations.
• Players should no longer fall out of their parachute. 

7 Days to Die

via reddit user u/nettech09

10/26 

• Some general improvements to zombie jumping
• Fixed: Snakes are fireproof

8/31

• Fixed: Businessman Zombie when killed can have his head dislocated when he falls backwards 
• Fixed: Vultures can fly underwater
• Fixed: Bears and wolves walk on water 

8/04

• Fixed: Wrong open sound on eviscerated remains
• Fixed: Dysentery description does not mention that it is lethal 

6/06

• Added: Moldy Bread is a science crafting item
• Changed: Fat zombie cops are bigger
• Changed: Zombie soldiers are less generous with the rocket launchers
• Fixed: Breaking down a car on the sloped road will create a hole in the world 

Oxygen Not Included

10/5

• Stress vomiting Duplicants infected with Hypothermia should no longer vomit "Hypothermia germs" 

8/31

• Fixed a crash that could occur if a Duplicant died while using a wash basin 

3/02

• Algae distillery has a much longer conversion interval
• Duplicants no longer use the massage table during red alert 

Ylands

12/9

• Horse is no longer perceived as a threat when sleeping 

Medieval Engineers

via reddit user u/zacrynix

12/12

• Fixed a crash when you walk on the exact north pole. 

11/28

• The Janitor will now clean up any static grids in the center of the planet. 

PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds

via reddit user u/beerye 

12/27  

• Fixed the issue where the falling speed meter text was showing abnormally in Portuguese 

12/11

• Fixed the issue where player's footstep sound was silenced when player moved diagonally or wore particular shoes 

12/8

• Fixed the issue where while vaulting in FPP, player could look inside own body 

Lone Echo

8/30 

• Repeatedly punching the dummies will no longer result in a crash. Swing away. 

Prey

via reddit user u/everypostepic 

8/2

• Fixed crash when mimicking bass guitar in the Yellow Tulip.
• Player can no longer bypass ceiling collision by mantling GLOO. 
• If the player manages to fully GLOO the greater mimic while it is in mid-lunge toward the player's face, the facegrab animation will no longer play and trap the player. 

5/31

• Superfruit no longer appears shrunken and flat when fully grown.

As I slogged deeper and deeper into the year, dozens of tabs open across three monitors and a laptop, I started to get a little delirious. It was in this moment that I fell in love with the long-suffering community managers and blog writers who compile patch notes. These poor people cry out for help with little quips, "just to see if anyone is still reading this." My friends: I see you, and I love you. 

Astroneer

12/18

• Fixed a few other instances of Client players getting stuck in a wheelie while driving a Rover in Multiplayer games. 

10/12

• Fixed an issue where Rovers would fly into space when loading a save from a rover seat 

9/15

• Fixed a rare crash, that according to engineers was “super weird, and something that should never occur,” involving the game trying to access non-existent Rover wheels.
• Fixed an issue where items would go on a beautiful journey into space if not collected from an dead Astroneer before a second death occurs. 

Hitman

via reddit user u/newbzoors 

7/13

• We've fixed an issue that could cause the toilet in the Marrakesh school to behave erratically after 47 kicks it onto Zaydan. This could occasionally result in 47's death. Seriously. 

Total War: Warhammer

via reddit user u/flavahbeast 

10/25

• FIXED an issue with the AI proposing peace right after entering a war with the player
• FIXED a staircase in Lothern Siege battle map which would cause chariots to spontaneously combust
• FIXED CA Cinematics Team’s obsession with slaying High Elves. May require further testing…
• FIXED Spearmen unit in Tor Elithis Rogue army T-Posing
• Skavenslaves: more salt added to diet; now 25% more delicious 

8/9

• Under-Morking no longer automatically leads to over-Gorking, and vice-versa. The waxing or waning of Morrslieb may affect this. Or it may not. 

PUBG Corporation has issued an apology for problems with the distribution of the in-game currency BP following the full release of Playerunknown's Battlegrounds in December, and promised that players who were shortchanged will be taken care of. Based on the responses, however, the BP flub isn't what players are worried about. 

"We would first like to offer our most sincere apologies to our users who could not fully enjoy the game because BP was not given out properly, an issue which had occurred after the PC 1.0 launch, up until the Dec 27th (Wed) scheduled maintenance," PUBG Corp wrote.

"We are compensating you for this loss. BP is given out to users all around the world, so it might not be received right away after clicking on the popup informing you about your BP compensation. Please be patient, you will get your compensation." 

Players have until 3:59 pm PT/6:59 pm ET on February 9 to make the claim; in case there's any doubt, the message emphasizes that "you won't receive any BP if you click Confirm on the BP reward screen after the BP reward period is over." 

But the responses in the reply thread are focused almost exclusively on something else entirely, and it is, to put it mildly, ugly: 358 pages (and counting) of demands to region lock China. (The thread is also predictably salted with racial slurs, so exercise whatever cautions you feel appropriate before clicking.)

Steam recently saw a PUBG-driven explosion in the number of Chinese users, which unfortunately has also led to a massive influx of Chinese cheaters. Creator Brendan Greene told Kotaku in December that the vast majority of PUBG cheaters are now based in China, where cheating in online games is "seen as kind of a little bit more acceptable" than it is in other regions. 

A Steam user named Spud summed up the state of things slightly more eloquently than most. "Can you sort the hackers out please instead of this BP bullshit, no one gives a shit about BP," they wrote. "90/100 games now i die to hackers, and im not even being salty. Watch my replays. Sort it out, the game is ruined, stop just thinking about making money all the time. Make a decent game."

It's hard to argue with success, and debates about its long-term viability aside, the 1.5 million people currently playing PUBG certainly indicate that it's doing something right. And while the discontent on display is obvious, people looking for a Chinese region lock probably shouldn't get their hopes up: Greene made it clear in December that he's against the idea of banning an entire country because of a relatively small number of cheats. 

"Yes, the majority of cheaters come out of China, but that doesn't mean all Chinese players are cheaters. This idea that just because you've got a few bad eggs, you've got to ban a whole country is a bit reactive," he said. 

"They love the game. Why would we restrict them from playing on servers? I just don't get the attitude of some people."