Recently, a new game on steam called PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds has risen in popularity, even surpassing GTA V in the number of online players at one point, topping the popular online game by 20,000 people. Stats from Steamspy revealed an increasing number of players are getting into PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds, with a 1 million jump in just three weeks from 2 July - 23 July.
What makes this game so different from other games?
Truthfully, not much. There are many games like it, including H1Z1: King of the Hill, ARK: Survival of the Fittest, ARMA 3: Battle Royale, Rust: Battle Royale, and many others. Why gamers have latched onto this game in particular is a different question.
The answer could lie in the way it pits players against each other. In this battle royale game, players are dropped in mass groups of up to 100 people onto an island, where they gather guns, machetes, and other supplies they use to keep themselves alive and fend off enemies. They then have a hunger games-style fight to the death, in an ever-shrinking arena, until there is a single survivor.
Brendan “PlayerUnknown” Greene, the creative director of PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds, stated that he created the game to “find the best player”, saying that “No matter what you have, you should be able to win.” He goes on further to say that so long as you’re a good enough player, “you’ll best the other player, and that, for me, is what battle royale is.”
While PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds is still in development, it will remain on PC, but once it is released it will be available for PC and Xbox One. Due to an exclusivity deal between Bluehole (the company that owns PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds) and Microsoft, it may be a while before it is released for PlayStation 4, and it is unclear if Sony will ever pursue a deal with Bluehole.
This game has received numerous patches since launch, and there is much to be done to bring it to a stable version. PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds is currently in Early Access, meaning it's still in development. Players are bound to experience bugs and glitches playing the game in its current form.
