Today's 2018 roadmap for PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds is hopefully everything players have been hoping to hear for some time. Certain topics commonly discussed by the community may have been absent from the roadmap, like balance and crates, but those were likely beyond the scope of the roadmap. Also at issue is the lack of a more specific release schedule, perhaps betraying PUBG Corp.'s lack of dedication to these pl

The battle royale formula was not entirely the brainchild of the PUBG Corporation - PUBG itself certainly derived content from pre-existing games - but since its success, there has been a trend of other developers copying the PUBG beginner guide model. The PUBG Corporation has been openly critical of titles like Fortnite in the past for seeming to be copying their formula, but the company has never fought so strongly against another title as they are now with this lawsuit against NetE

Considering the fact that PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds Steam sales have made it the third-highest grossing game on Valve's digital distribution platform, it's safe to say that the battle royale title is a bona fide success. Of course, many would still argue that the game suffers from a litany of issues, with one ever-present complaint from lots of fans being about how Chinese cheaters are making PUBG matches unfair. This has led to plenty of calls for PUBG Corp. to "region lock China," but its creator Brendan Greene disagrees that it's a viable solution to the prob

First, though, he mentioned updates. The team is committing to more frequent updates, with big content delivery coming every two months, and smaller updates coming more frequently. The big ones will make changes to systems or drop content, where smaller updates will focus on bugs. Aesthetics will be updated now and again as well. Bluehole will also launch an Experimental Test Server to help get feedback from players on future content.

Greene continued to state that although the red zone serves a purpose, the decision on whether or not to remove it from the game – as with all other in-game features – will ultimately come down to the collaborative efforts between the community and the development t

What's more is that Tencent – the company responsible for PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds ' Chinese localization and the mobile port – went so far as to work with the country's police to catch cheat makers. This collaboration between Tencent and the Chinese authorities assisted police in uncovering 30 cases of alleged involvement in making PUBG cheats and led to the arrest 120 people in Chi

Ever since its inception, the development team behind PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds has been trying to thwart cheating as much as possible, with one attempt being in the addition of reporting aspects to the game, including the somewhat recently incorporated 3D killcams and replay features . Furthermore, PUBG Corp. has, as Greene suggested to US Gamer, implemented "anti-cheating testing internally" with the company "working to build systems to really get a handle on the guys that don't want to play fa

At any rate, for those hoping that the red zone is going away any time soon, you may just want to start heeding the on-screen warnings a little better…or, maybe, just avoid being anywhere near the red zone altoget

While some PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds fans may disagree with Greene's stance when it comes to the notion of region locking the game in China, it would be difficult for one to claim that PUBG Corp. is not taking the issue of cheating seriously. After all, the development team behind the battle royale title has been steadily working on anti-cheat updates, introduced fresh rules in an effort to stop cheaters and unauthorized programs, and has banned more than one million players in the past for the offe

Not all content will be entirely new; much of what's planned for 2018 will be reworked content currently in the game, some of which has been long-requested by the PUBG player base. Of special interest are reworked parachuting and unarmed melee combat systems, both of which have been heavily criticized. Even larger is an overhaul of the entire Third Person and First Person mode animation system to increase smoothness and reactiveness, including new animations for switching car seats or entering a vehi

As you can imagine, another major focus for the development team is working out the kinks in stability -- a task which is a much more common topic of discussion for both the developers and the community. In this respect, Bluehole noted "it is impossible to solve these problems once and for all, but our goal is to continuously improve in this rega

Taking all of this into consideration, it looks as if PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds will not be region locking China any time soon in an effort to discourage cheaters. So, hopefully the aforementioned efforts on behalf of PUBG Corp. and Tencent will manage to stymie the unethical practice in the long run, if not end it altoget