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Blog entry by Gennie Symon

PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds is the Survival Game for People That Don't Like Survival Games

  • Gennie Symon
  • Saturday, 6 December 2025, 10:56 PM
  • 5 min read

Since it debuted on Early Access last March and finally launched last month, PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds has shown little signs of slowing down with regular new updates and content being added, with PC players getting a new update on the hori

Since its debut on Steam Early Access in March of this year, PUBG has eclipsed over 30 million players in a way that can only be described as a "phenomenon." However, given that the game has only just "released" now nine months after it launched through in Early Access, PUBG still very much feels like a game that's a work-in-progress, and that's likely going to be the case with it for months and, potentially, ye

The next Monthly Update will also introduce the game's first new paid cosmetic items through a "crate and key system," which Greene took time in the community forum to address. Due to some of the negative reaction towards implementing the system, Greene expressed that the introduction and testing of the new paid cosmetics will "serve as the foundation of a healthy economy after launch," and will aim to "benefit all players - both who are willing to pay and who are not willing to pay for vanity items." However, Greene also addressed that "our messaging wasn't clear" in terms of implementing the new system, and added that the team will "try to communicate better moving forwa

As a genre that's only grown in popularity over the past few years, I've mostly found myself bouncing off most survival games for a combination of reasons. I've liked the style of We Happy Few , the Hunger Games -inspired carnage of The Culling , the man vs. nature atmosphere of The Long Dark , and several others in the past, but few have ever left their impression on me for more than a few hours, largely due to gameplay mechanics that I (often) don't quite mesh with fu

Part of that comes from the twists and turns that Battlegrounds implements to keep the action focused and the dynamics of each match constantly evolving. Aside from other players, one of the biggest threats that players will have to face throughout the entire match is an electric forcefield that constricts the playable areas of the map gradually, which works to both prevent camping or cheesing the game mechanics, and to push players into tighter fields of play and encourage confrontation. That also goes for the game's occasional airstrikes (the "red zones" on the map) that drop lethal bombs on unsuspecting players, and passing planes that can also drop supply care-packages that contain some of the game's best weapons and gear for players that get lucky. Better yet, the care packages also offer a chance for crafty players to use them as bait and pick off those that aren't paying attention to their surroundi

Originating from Greene's work on developing mods such as DayZ: Battle Royale (originating from ARMA 2 and its subsequent DayZ ), Battlegrounds ultimately became a sort of mix of the attributes that Greene wanted to take from survival horror Game games - the emphasis on player choice and preservation - while refining some of its weaker points. Specifically, Greene's focus on making large maps that would be difficult to pin down exact strategies from game-to-game play a large part of what Battlegrounds has turned out to be, while item randomization ensures that no match plays out exactly the same as it did bef

In the hours I've played in Battlegrounds , I've come out of each round with wildly different outcomes. Some matches I died almost immediately after parachuting into a dropzone, due to either just dumb luck or a lack of vital resources to gather. Other times, my friends and I rode our way to near-victory ( with our best Squad game resulting in #2 placement ) and executed squad tactics with lethal precision - only for the game's unpredictable ways catching us by surprise in the

Even though I've only put a few hours into Battlegrounds at this point since jumping in, I can already see it as a title that I'll more than likely come back to in the coming months. With rounds that usually extend for me around 20-30 minutes (if I don't get killed right from the get-go), the game has drawn in me like few others ever have, much less any type of survival sim or Early Access game before it, and most of that comes down to its incredibly streamlined sense of survival at play, and how it draws players together in a fight to the finish. To say Battlegrounds is exhilarating is an understatement: even in its earliest state right now, I've kept coming back to the game night after night because it's gotten my blood pumping like few other games have in the past few ye

Adjusted squad team colors to make them more consistent between different colorblind options

Added a function where a player can select more detailed criteria for the "Cheating" category in the in-game report

With a name that strikes somewhere between wonderfully-bizarre and generically "video gamey," the indie hit sensation PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds (aka PUBG ) has proven to be anything but generic in the past few months, where it went from being a relatively unknown title to one of the year's biggest breakout succes

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