PUBG Adds Bots to Non-Ranked Games

Last year, Fortnite caused a fair amount of turmoil in their community by adding bots to the game. On paper it was to keep new players from feeling overwhelmed by all the super-skilled players out there who destroyed them without much thought, which is a noble enough goal but people were quick to point out it wasn’t very satisfying to kill bots: after all, if you aren’t ruining someone else’s day, what’s even the point of playing video games?

Anyway, the controversy came and went because nothing means anything anymore, and now PUBG is going to try it for themselves, largely for the same reasons. And the reaction from the community, unsurprisingly, is largely the same as well:

As happens with many games, we’ve seen the general skill level of our players grow significantly over the last 3 years. While PUBG veterans continue to hone their skills and improve, we’re seeing more often that many newer players are being eliminated early with no kills – and oftentimes with no damage dealt. You’ve been telling us for a while that the widening skill gap is creating a more and more challenging environment for some of our players and we’re now ready to talk about our plan to help this.

In an effort to provide more ways for players to hone their skills and be able to fully enjoy what PUBG has to offer, we’ve decided to introduce bots with Update 7.1. Bots can have both positive or negative effects on a game depending on how well it is programmed, so let’s go over some of the things we’ve been considering when programming these artificial aggressors.

For what it's worth, like with Fortnite, Bots won’t be showing up in ranked modes, and apparently they’ll be using Machine Learning to ensure that the bots evolve organically so they’re satisfying to fight, even if you’re not outperforming another player.

In any case, I’m sure players will more-or-less forget about how much they hate it soon. That’s just the nature of gaming culture.