PUBG's First Post-Launch PC Update Brings Server Improvements, Dev Addresses Nagging Lag

The live servers for the PC version of PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds (PUBG) went offline for a couple of hours yesterday, but not because something was wrong. Instead, PUBG Corp was rolling out its first patch (version 1.0) for the PC release since the game exited Steam's Early Access program, bringing with it a bunch of improvements and bug fixes to the highly popular battle royale shooter.

One of the most annoying issues some PUBG players have been experiencing is lag. PUBG Corp said that addressing in-game lag was one of its top priorities with the 1.0 patch for PC. The developer also said that a multitude of issues were to blame for the in-game lag to become worse or happen more frequently in the past few weeks, which is why it was not able fix things more quickly.

"Contrary to most expectations, there is a combination of causes that lead to the in-game lag and character position readjustment issues. The issues cannot be attributed to one or two causes and have stemmed from a combination of different factors which is why we need to continuously work on resolving and investigating the problem," PUBG Corp said. "We upgraded our game engine to the latest version and made changes to the game when we added new content. The problem resulted from these changes as well as several other causes."

With the 1.0 patch, PUBG Corp said it remove inefficiencies in its server infrastructure, as well as include some optimizations to help alleviate the problem. Those include adjustments to reduce the bottleneck during the game server launch phase, and also stomping out some server hitch bugs.

Though the patch should help smooth things out, there is more work to be done. PUBG Corp said that reducing lag remains a top concern, and that it will be analyzing and fixing other issues every day.

"After today’s update, we will be running some internal tests and deploying more updates to gradually mitigate the problem. We are currently examining several measures including server optimization and server logic modification to address the multitude of causes. On top of this, we will continue our efforts to further investigate remaining causes," the developer added.

The patch also stomped out a few other bugs, including one where players could die unexpectedly from fall damage.