On PC, PUBG hit version 1.0 late last year. And while new content in the form of maps, weapons, and quality of life improvements have been coming - the developer notes that in a new letter to the community that it has fallen short in a few areas. Those being performance, server-side optimization, and cheating.

Ever since we launched the 1.0 version of PUBG earlier this year, we’ve been focused on building our team so we can invest in the game’s ongoing development. We’ve been building new content (like Sanhok), quality-of-life improvements (like map selection and weapon balance), and a whole series of aggressive anti-cheat measures. We want PUBG to be the best game possible so players like you keep loving—and playing—it.

Although we’ve made some meaningful improvements to PUBG, we’ve fallen short in other ways. Players have rightfully called us out for failing to address complaints about performance, and recently we haven’t done the best job of communicating about the changes we’re making to the game. Today we want to change that by talking in-depth about the things we’re prioritizing. We’ll also tease some of upcoming content we plan to add to the game.

The PUBG dev team notes that these three key areas have become the top priority for the studio. In terms of performance the team seems to understand where some of the random FPS drops are coming from and plan to implement both client and server-side updates to address these issues.


From the client-side perspective the changes sound extensive.

Character optimization

• We’ll optimize the way the game handles the movement of opponents who you can’t see.
  
• The vaulting process and animations will also be improved—we believe this will address certain screen stuttering issues affecting low-powered PCs.
  
• We’ll improve the character model rendering process to prevent some small frame drop issues.
  
• We’ll optimize character movement and animation while skydiving to improve framerate when multiple characters are skydiving at the same time.
  
• We’ll optimize parachute animations to cut down on frame drops near the start of the match

We expect the final three changes above will make the early stages of each match feel much smoother. War Mode will also benefit immensely from these changes.

Vehicle optimization

• We’ll optimize the way the game handles unseen (far away) vehicle movement and the movement of player models inside faraway vehicles.
  
• Currently stopped vehicles demand an unnecessary amount from your CPU. We’ll fix it.

Loading optimization/stabilization

• We’ll optimize the core structures of Miramar and Sanhok to improve map loading speed.
  
• We’ll optimize physical texture loading while level streaming, which should address screen stuttering issues.
  
• There’s a crashing issue caused by some level-streaming processes that we’ll address.

Other optimization work

• We’ll address the frame drop issue caused by high-magnification scopes
  Certain other far-away objects will be rendered in a less taxing way
  
• We’ll optimize the replay system to improve framerate for players who have the replay/death cam activated

The list of upcoming updates is extensive and it's great to hear that PUBG is focused on, well, having the performance to back up its gameplay. Something that Fortnite Battle Royale nailed from day one. PUBG's upcoming Sanhok map is still expected to launch next month.