PUBG Mobile players struggling to survive the grand battle royale have a new problem to worry about. Crafty players using emulation and computer mouse and keyboard are playing the game, facing down other players with a massive advantage.


Motherboard reports that a subset of PUBG Mobile players are using devices such as Chromecast or emulators to pair bluetooth devices with their game client and use mouse and keyboard controls. As other players make due with passable but slightly slower mobile controls, these more accurate players dominate the opposition.



The most common method is with an easy-to-use Android emulator called Bluestacks. Bluestacks allows players to assign keyboard shortcuts to the various on-screen buttons that are normally used to play PUBG Mobile. Once this is done, everything works like the original game rather than a mobile port.

PUBG Mobile already drew some criticism for the apparent inclusion of bots that fill out matches with easy-to-kill fodder. Players picking up the game for the first time boasted of easy victories only to learn their victories might have been made much easier thanks to the number of bots. With an influx of mouse and keyboard users to the game, the opposite issue might happen—players using their phone might be doomed to lose.




“Holy shit, they’re gonna think I’m cheating,” one YouTuber using a mouse and keyboard said as he recorded gameplay. “I’m gonna get reported for hacking and shit.”



“Won 5 games and realized that very soon once the process for doing that [using mouse and keyboard] is commonplace that all mobile will be filled with people doing it.” a commentator said on Reddit.



The situation resembles an issue that Fortnite Battle Royale currently faces on consoles, where it is possible to use peripheral mouse and keyboards for precision movement. Popular YouTubers like jackfrags have attempted to raise awareness, showing off how easy it is to use special tools and dominate matches. PUBG Mobile is a surprisingly solid port of the popular battle royale game, but between braindead bots and highly accurate mouse and keyboard users, it might soon become an experience where “normal” players are hardly the norm.

