PUBG dev admits it has fallen short in some areas, promises major performance optimisations

PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds developer has released the first of many letters to the community, touching on a number of subjects.

In a blog post, PUBG Corp. admitted that it has fallen short in areas such as game performance optimisations while it focused on creating new content, tackling the game's cheating problem, and making quality-of-life improvements.

The studio's priorities now are in performance, server-side optimisations, and cheating. Some of the issues causing performance drops are client-side, such as vehicles producing too many effects as they move over different ground materials.

The way lighting effects are processed is another culprit, and both are currently being worked on. There's another, long list of client-side optimisations the developer also promised to address, which you can see below.

The main takeaway is that performance and optimisation fixes will be shipped as soon as they're ready, rather than waiting for a major patch.

On the server-side, the developer is working on reducing desync problems. This involves optimising the game's network code to translate player movements faster, and increase the speed servers transfer loot data in order to get rid of situations where items spawn late for some players.

These netcode update should make it more efficient at handling object updates. This should reduce the number of updates certain objects unnecessarily send to the server, which explains why players sometimes see frame-rate drops and other issues when nothing is happening in their vicinity.

When it comes to anti-cheat, PUBG Corp. says cheaters now get banned within hours of using a cheat or exploit, and the developer promised to continue with its "aggressive" anti-cheat measures.

As far as new content, the developer confirmed that Sanhok will be released before the end of June, followed by a Sanhok-exclusive vehicle and weapon. The vehicle is called Tukshai, and it's based on the Tuk-Tuk used throughout the region.

Upcoming client-side optimisation

-Character optimisation

• 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 optimise parachute animations to cut down on frame drops near the start of the match

-Vehicle optimisation

• We’ll optimise 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 optimisation/stabilisation

• We’ll optimise the core structures of Miramar and Sanhok to improve map loading speed.
• We’ll optimise 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 optimisation 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 optimise the replay system to improve frame-rate for players who have the replay/death cam activated

Upcoming server-side optimisation

• 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 optimise the replay system to improve frame-rate for players who have the replay/death cam activated