PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds had been the leading game on Steam’s concurrent players’ list for months. Thanks to the game’s wildfire-like popularity, you can easily find over 1 million online players at any point of the day. However, this wasn’t the case for the last few weeks.

Recently, there was a slight decrease in the number of concurrent players, most probably due to the lack of new content and repetitiveness. Bluehole wasn’t happy. And then, Patch 24 was dropped.

With Patch 24, players were granted access to the chilly, cold and foggy world of Vikendi, the snow map players were eagerly waiting for. It is a 6x6km map with more tactical opportunities and strategic planning. Vehicles are more slippery, acceleration is slow and you lose more general vehicle control as you speed up.

Post-Patch 24, players started rolling back and within no time, over one million of us were in the game. The effect wasn’t just because of the map, but PUBG’s new premium Survivor Pass.

The $9.99 Survivor Pass grants you exclusive 10-week access to new missions and rewards with the eligibility to claim coupons to unlock exclusive rewards. The Survival Pass has a lot more to offer, including Daily Missions, Weekly Missions, Challenge Missions and Premium Missions. (If you aren’t planning to get the Survival Pass… ah… you might be missing on some cool stuff.)

PUBG is also known for its “we won’t fix the bugs, deal with it” commitment. But with Patch 24, Bluehole has fixed a ton of bugs, cheats, hacks and most importantly, performance issues. For instance, the game is now more optimised and a treat for players with mid-end PC specifications.

The patch has improved CPU performance by optimising the object creation process and GPU performance for Medium and Low options by adjusting graphics quality related to the ‘Post Processing’ with those settings (tuned HBAO+).

Many gamers were arguing that PUBG is now a “dead game” and that the game is reaching its end. I don’t think so. As long as the developers are supporting it and adding new content frequently, players will keep coming.

What do you think? Let me know in the comments below.

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