PUBG Responds to Fortnite‘s Growing Popularity With New Event Mode

The struggle for the battle royale throne has grown ever more fierce in the past year. Longtime king of the castle PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds has seen Epic’s Fortnite grow to usurp the battle royale market through gameplay that doesn’t rely on heavy military authenticity. The more quirky and celebratory presentation has drawn copious amounts of players, and prominent streamer Ninja’s stream with Drake last week cemented the game’s emergence into mainstream pop culture.

PUBG had to respond to its new challenger, and they did with the announcement on Wednesday of a new Event mode. The mode will feature a rotation of custom-built game modes that will be available for a limited time, the first of which will be an eight-person squad mode featuring double the amount of assault rifles of a standard PUBG match. It’s a modest first offering, but it shows that PUBG Corp is not content to define themselves solely by the realism of its game. “We know it’s not a huge change from the public matches but … this is just to get things rolling,” said the company.

It also shows that the developer is feeling the heat from Fortnite’s rise and quicker implementation of gameplay diversity. Despite PUBG Corp’s recent roadmap announcement, many feel that the game’s post-launch development has grown stagnant compared to that of Epic’s fresher juggernaut.

The Event mode will launch on the PUBG test server soon, though no exact date was given, and will only be playable in third-person mode on the game’s original forest map, Erangel.