Developer Bluehole has announced the conclusion of the studio’s recent massive campaign to improve major issues of PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds. Fix PUBG was originally meant to finally address the gaming community’s growing dissatisfaction how the developer handles their popular battle royale shooter.
It comes as a rude awakening for players of PUBG who welcomed Bluehole’s acknowledgment that the state of the original battle royale game wasn’t up to par. The Korean game developer promised to squash out the most prominent issues players were voicing since pretty much the game’s initial launch on Steam Early Access. A bold promise that soothed jaded players who started jumping ship on other battle royale experiences.
After all, it’s not early 2017 anymore and PUBG is no longer the only or even premier place to get your last man standing fix. Fortnite long has garnered a larger player audience due to being a free-to-play title but it also managed to gain positive mind share among gamers. in contrast, the more competition started to crop up, PUBG’s players became less and less happy with their game. Concurrent player numbers have been on a steady decline.
All is not lost however. There are still hundreds of thousands of active players in PUBG each day. Drastically less than during its peak but it still makes PUGB one of the most popular multiplayer shooters on the market.
Fix PUBG could have been a turning-point for the game and win back old players and new ones alike. Sadly, it looks like the three-month long campaign wasn’t good enough, as with Bluehole’s statement that Fix PUBG is now over, the game has started to receive large amounts of negative user reviews on Steam. The complaints are the same as before Fix PUBG. Cheaters, matchmaking, performance and server issues are continuing to plague the once-poster child battle royale breakout hit.
Despite Bluehole detailing the improvements made during the Fix PUBG campaign in their post, the studio admits that it overlooked issues that matter to the community and that they reflected a lot on their own mistakes. The developer once again promises to change their direction and that in 2019 stability and quality will be the most important values.
Meanwhile, PUBG is set to finally arrive on the PS4 after a whole year of Xbox One console-exclusivity, on December 7. It’ll be interesting to see how the PS4 audience welcomes the game. Fortnite and H1Z1 have used the absence of PUBG on Sony’s console to foster their own audience over the past year, and with all the negative press PUBG has been receiving for a long while now, it’s not certain it’ll become a major success either.
