The latest update to battle royale juggernaut PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds is focused almost entirely on reining in the game’s bots, which for the past two weeks have been waging a brutal war on human players.
“We have deployed an update with additional changes to the bot balance adjustments applied in Update 12.1, reducing the overall strength and effectiveness of bots when engaged in combat against players,” the official patch notes read. “We are closely monitoring player sentiment related to bots and will make additional changes if needed, please continue sharing your feedback with us.”
The changes include a reduction to bot accuracy when firing on players and decreased reaction times. The distance from which PUBG bots will switch to a gun’s full-auto mode has also been shortened, meaning they’ll stick to single-fire more often during engagements.
While bots have been controversial among PUBG players since the moment they were implemented in 2020, the last two weeks have seen an uptick in complaints. After a May 26 update that, among other things, improved bot AI, players increasingly found themselves being taken down by non-human opponents with seemingly superhuman reactions. Some compared these new bots to cheaters using wallhacks and auto-aim to spot them behind cover and land difficult shots with ease.
PUBG players often jokingly referred to these beefed-up bots as Terminators, but seeing as Fortnite nabbed that property earlier this year, the developers probably weren’t too worried about missing out on a lucrative crossover with these adjustments. Not only will this improve the experience for players, but hopefully it’ll prevent Skynet from coming online just a little bit longer too.
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