PUBG: BATTLEGROUNDS News

Team Liquid's new facility is a show of faith in its European players

Over the years, Utrecht has oozed with sporting talent. The Netherlands' fourth-largest city has produced footballing icons like Marco van Basten and Wesley Sneijder, or Olympic athletes like sprinter Dafne Schippers. But it's not just traditional sports Utrecht is famous for - it's also the birthplace of Team Liquid, one of the most iconic organisations in esports.

Earlier today, Team Liquid officially cut the ribbon to its second state-of-the-art esports facility. After opening the doors of its California space in 2018, the new Alienware Training Facility in the centre of Utrecht brings all the shiny toys over for the European teams to have a go - as well as seeing Liquid invest in the city where it was first dreamt up.

From Liquid's Dota 2 team to its fresh new Valorant roster, this will be the base for a number of its esports teams to not only train, but in some cases live. The 10,000 sq ft facility is not only packed to the rafters with top-spec gaming equipment, but with all the health and wellbeing features that the world's biggest organisations are beginning to invest in heavily.

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Here's PUBG reimagined as a "cinematic survival game"

PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds is one of the best battle royale games around, packed with players chasing down 99 others in pursuit of those ever-elusive chicken dinners. But, one PUBG fan's reimagined it as something else entirely, with a new "concept video" that puts it in a whole other genre: a "cinematic survival game".

Content creator Myles_AwayTwitch has posted a ten-minute clip in the multiplayer game's subreddit, which we've included below, explaining: "I made a concept video of PUBG as a cinematic survival game". As you can see, it starts off the same as all PUBG matches: in a plane, with the player dropping down to the enormous map below. But, once on the ground, the game takes a different turn altogether, the player character more pre-occupied with sneaking past foes, getting themselves safe and properly equipped at a nearby camp, and venturing into the wilderness to survive.

The creator makes use of some nifty, alternative perspective cinematic shots to enhance the survival game feel of the footage, and it does bring a Resident Evil-like quality to PUBG.

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Update 8.3 - Now Live

The final update of season 8 is here and brings a brand new tool to help you catch up to the playzone, a new mode of transportation to avoid those heavily camped bridges, some UI adjustments and more!

Take a little extra time in the Blue Zone with the new Jammer Pack! This new pack has the capacity of a level 2 bag and interrupts Blue Zone damage while its battery lasts, letting you catch up to the play zone or utilize the blue zone for a tactical advantage. The Jammer Pack drops on Sanhok and Karakin starting this update!

Treading the chilled waters of Erangel are new Ferries delivering players to and from Sosnovka Island. Four Ferries travel back and forth between two different destinations, giving you some alternatives to crashing through bridge blockades, finding a boat, or swimming it. Add to that a new Assist indication in the UI, two new Team Deathmatch stages on Sanhok, indicators when your teammates enter combat, and more.

The M416 has also received an additional sound adjustment, you can the context related to this change in the patch notes. We hope these new changes are more to your liking, and will be monitoring your feedback.

Add to that a new Assist indication in the UI, two new Team Deathmatch stages on Sanhok, indicators when your teammates enter combat, and more.

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Learn all the details in the patch notes or drop in and check them out yourself!

Leaked PUBG mode Vostok is "tournament-style battle royale"

Some leaked upcoming features for PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds suggest an experimental new mode is in the pipeline. The multiplayer game could be getting a "tournament-style battle royale" that plays quite differently to a standard round of PUBG.

In a full breakdown on everything known so far about the mode, PUBG-leaks expert PlayerIGN runs through what is currently code-named "Vostok". A hybrid of FPS games and autobattlers, the structure involves players competing against each other in a series of 1v1 encounters with a set amount of lives, the winner being the last one left. PlayerIGN speculates that Vostok will run on "chances", meaning you'll start with three lives, losing one each time you're killed, and players rotate through one another as more as eliminated until it's just two.

Currency and a weapons store are involved. Money is rewarded per-round, much like Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, with bonuses if you won, and how well you did it, and the option to upgrade your loadout before each new round starts. PlayerIGN believes a leaked animation from May of this year is linked to the "Deployment Zone" players enter into at the start of each match before being sorted for opening rounds.

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The PUBG esports scene is still "evolving" according to its project manager

PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds has had a rough ride in the esports scene. Despite lofty ambitions and early large-scale tournaments, PUBG has hit many a speed bump with its professional scene over the years, forcing the company to overcome and adapt.

PUBG esports has seen as many lows as highs. Although it's just come off the back of a tumultuous year in which organisations left the scene for good, revenue sharing programmes were botched, and key stakeholders predicted it was on its last legs, it's still standing.

By honing in on the things that matter, PUBG Corp has helped breathe new life into the scene. A online league, known as the PUBG Continental Series, now plugs the gap left by COVID-19 and it's working. So to understand the method behind the madness and the process of the last couple of years, we sat down with PUBG esports project manager Michael Sung, the man who's been leading the charge in South Korea for the last two years.

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