FOUR YEARS IN THE MAKING
From humble beginnings as a genre defining game-mode for DayZ mod on ARMA 2, PLAYERUNKNOWN’s Battlegrounds is a Battle Royale standalone game that has finally hit a milestone many gamers have been waiting for. After extensive development, Battlegrounds is now available through Early Access on Steam, where players can now purchase the game and try it out for themselves.
Brendan Greene, Creative Director at Bluehole and the man behind the PLAYERUNKNOWN nametag, announced the launch on Steam with a heartfelt thank you to the community who have supported him in turning his passion project into a reality.
MAY THE ODDS BE EVER IN YOUR FAVOUR
Gamers are now able to pick up an Early Access copy of PLAYERUNKNOWN’s Battlegrounds for $29.99 / £26.99 / €29.99 in their respective regions. This price is not set to change upon the game’s release, so gamers won’t be penalised for wanting to jump on board early.
Early Access is slated to last an estimated six months before the game will publicly launch worldwide, a rather narrow launch window after what has been several rounds of extensive alpha and closed beta testing. The game currently has its core content in place with gunplay, weapons and animations implemented albeit with further optimisations still required.
DIGGING OUT OF THE TRENCHES
Early Access can be murky waters at times for games, however, the developers at Bluehole have laid out a path to release that includes further optimisations to the game and a suite of modding tools. A promise of full transparency and open dialogue has been reinforced as the game is guided to full release over the following months.
Players can still expect closed, invitational only, rounds of testing of new experimental features relating around custom games during Early Access. However, the core of the game is open to everyone who purchases an Early Access copy of the game, access to closed testing is still unclear and will likely be announced once custom games enters its testing phase.
POTATO OPTIMIZATIONS
With the announcement of the launch of PLAYERUNKNOWN’s Battlegrounds into Early Access, Brendan Greene covered the initial areas of development Bluehole will be focusing on. Development will mostly be focused around optimizations, providing higher and more stable framerates across the varied GPU configurations of its player base.
For gamers interested in participating in some last-man-standing combat action, you can now pick up an Early Access copy of PLAYERUNKNOWN’s Battlegrounds on the Steam store page. For beta testers interested in what has changed with the launch of the Early Access version, you can visit the official website to read the Early Access launch day patch notes.
