PUBG Battlegrounds will send players back in time with throwback Erangel map

PUBG Battlegrounds is reintroducing the game’s original map, Erangel, with all sorts of content and design touches to fully evoke the days when the game was called PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds, and it was the breakout hit of battle royale gaming.

Called Erangel Classic, the map will be available on PC from May 14 to May 28, and on consoles (PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X) May 23 to June 6. Erangel Classic will not be available on PUBG Mobile. Erangel Classic will replace the current Erangel map in Normal Match during its two-week availability.

And by Erangel Classic, Krafton doesn’t mean just restoring topographical features or buildings that have been altered and iterated on over the past seven years. Bench weapons, which are guns laid out on a grid of picnic tables at certain locations, make their return.

The UI will also have an OG PUBG look, from the world map and minimap to “the charmingly tacky font and graphics,” the developer said. Weapon recoil, although not a perfect match for PUBG in the original game, is noticeably reduced on this map, too.

“Erangel Classic preserves the essence of the earlier version of Erangel, its distinctive appearance and atmosphere, all while delivering the enjoyable gameplay experiences that players have grown accustomed to,” Krafton said. The patch notes dropping May 13 will have more.

PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds launched in early access on Windows PC in March 2017. with a full launch the following December on PC, around the time it showed up in Xbox One’s early access Game Preview program. It made its full launch on that console in September 2018. It was renamed PUBG Battlegrounds in the summer of 2021.

Although not the first battle royale, even in early access PUBG was the top game leading that genre through its 2017 craze, albeit ceding that status to Fortnite in 2018, after its battle royale mode launched in September 2017. PUBG Battlegrounds has made a comeback, somewhat, surging from a monthly peak current player count, on Steam, of 415,000 in September to 764,034 in March, its highest monthly peak since December 2020.

PUBG Mobile, which launched in March 2018, boasts 20 million active users, those figures according to Krafton. Greatly helped by a sizeable audience in both China and India (playing versions specific to their locations), PUBG Mobile counted more than a billion users by the end of 2022.

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