PlayerUnknown's BATTLEGROUNDS Adding Zombies

Screen Rant

PlayerUnknown's BATTLEGROUNDS Is Adding Zombies As Well

By Rob Keyes

Published Jun 15, 2017

Players just want the game to work right but the devs behind PlayerUnknown's BATTLEGROUNDS want you thinking about the future.

PlayerUnknown's BATTLEGROUNDS is not only getting some much-needed basic feature updates (i.e. climbing!) and not only is it being worked on for Xbox One consoles, but it's also getting an all-new zombies mode!

Perhaps another unsurprising update coming to Battlegrounds given that the battle royale style massively multiplayer shooter hails from a line of battle royale mods in zombie-based titles (DayZ and H1Z1), zombies will be included in a very different way in PlayerUnknown's self-titled game. They'll be player controlled!

It's an idea I've suggested myself while streaming the game, that when a player dies, instead of just spectating or exiting the match when their team has been eliminated, that there could be a way for them to participate, running around as zombies and engaging players that way. And it's better that players control them since the AI and animations on the zombies in the other aforementioned titles are terrible, hence why the Battle Royale mods and modes have taken over.

The zombies will be added to PUBG in a separate game mode and not part of the core solos, duos, and squads and it's unclear how they'll be implemented or how far off that content addition is. We do know the idea came from custom games held by the PUBG Partners community so it's awesome to see the devs taking the community wishlist to heart in this way, especially with Branden "PlayerUnknown" Greene promising that mod support will come to the game eventually as well. After all, he made his fortune and claim to fame as a modder himself.

The reception to all of the announcements from the community however isn't all that positive given the current state of the game. As a quickly developed early access title, the PUBG hasn't quite ever been a smooth experience. You cannot play for more than a few hours without disconnects, game crashes, or some sort of bug and while there's a unique and fun challenge to playing PlayerUnknown's BATTLEGROUNDS, it's basic combat gameplay lacks polish as well, something some of the more popular streamers get very vocal and frustrated about.

Greene went on record stating that the game wouldn't come to other consoles until it's polished, optimized and complete to the point where it leaves early access but this no longer seems to be the case. Xbox has its own early access equivalent so the title may be rushed to expand to the platform this fall before it's ready in the traditional sense, and with all the talk of new maps, new platforms, and now a new mode, when the game doesn't fully work as is, there's a lot of negativity surfacing for the popular Twitch hit. Here's developer Bluehole's community manager dealing with that:

Just because we are introducing new content does not mean we ignore the issue. Server engineers still focus on their usual work.— poopieQueen ? DHS17 (@poopieQueen) June 14, 2017

But it's E3, so the devs should be showing everything they're working on to tease the future and be as transparent as possible. Why not?