PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds' latest patch deals with AFK farmers

[Cal Jeffrey]

PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds (PUBG) has already enjoyed wild success and the game has not even been officially released yet. The Steam Early Access title became the most popular non-Valve game in July and has now sold over 10 million copies since its release back in March. With those numbers, it is inevitable that the MMO will have a fair number of cheaters.

While bots are not much of a problem thanks to developer Bluehole’s use of anti-cheat software BattlEye, PUBG has had an issue with idlers. Also known as AFK farmers, these are people who join matches but do nothing just to earn a little in-game currency (Battle Points or BP).

Bluehole recognized the problem after numerous complaints and recently issued a patch to address the matter.

“We have implemented rules that will not allow idle players to earn BPs,” the dev mentions in a blog post. “We will monitor this and improve the current system going forward.”

Players can use BPs to buy crates that sometimes contain rare cosmetic items, then turn around and sell them for real cash in the Steam Community Market. Some items are fetching quite a price. Don’t ask me why, but skirts go for $140 and up.

The patch was not solely for dealing with the AFK farmers. Bluehole also optimized some client-side items for lower-end PCs, added some new weather effects, made several improvements to the UI / UX, added a new weapon and more. You can check out the full patch notes on the developer's Steam blog.

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https://www.techspot.com/news/70970-playerunknown-battlegrounds-latest-patch-deals-afk-farmers.html

 

[OutlawCecil]

Psh how did they not EXPECT farming when all you had to do was join a game (not even win) and make real money. Of course people will have bots join games all day long. I suspect they might have encouraged this to inflate their daily player count if you ask me.

 

[ghostf1re]

Psh how did they not EXPECT farming when all you had to do was join a game (not even win) and make real money. Of course people will have bots join games all day long. I suspect they might have encouraged this to inflate their daily player count if you ask me.

Inflate their daily player count? Yeah, highly doubtful and completely unnecessary. The game is a lot of fun and doing something like that wouldn't even matter. There are so many people playing the game and loving it that all they need to do is sit back and enjoy the profit from sales.

What I don't understand is why people would pay actual money for something cosmetic. I can somewhat understand it in a MMORPG like WoW or FFXIV. At least in those games, you can show off the item, if that's your thing. But in PUBG, the minute you see someone, you're in a gun fight. No one cares what you're wearing. All they want is the gear you were holding. If anyone buys these items with real money, they need to get out of the house and make some friends.