PUBG’s desert map won’t be fully available until the game properly launches later this year

Vaulting and climbing coming at the same time

It’s the most successful Early Access game of all time, but PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds is barreling toward an actual final release. Developer Bluehole says that its plans are still to launch the 1.0 version on PC and the Game Preview version on Xbox before the end of the year.

In a timeline-heavy post on Steam, Bluehole reiterates how it’s nearly stopping with tweaks and patches in order to get the final version ready. That means this week’s update (which changes some granular spawn stuff and fixes a few animation and UI bugs) will be one of the last for the short-term.

However, Bluehole still needs to test some things. There two most notable additions to PUBG between now and release will be the desert map and vaulting/climbing. Those are both scheduled to launch right alongside the final product. That means they will be first deployed on the test server in three phases: vaulting and climbing take priority in phase one and two; the desert map and all other content will be part of the third phase.

There aren’t any exact dates for any of this yet. Bluehole just says that it’s starting in late October at the earliest and that everything will need to be tested for two to four weeks. But these are some of the identifiable major hurdles between the beta and the final game. They grow up so quickly.

Update: Road to Launch, Patch Notes for This Week [Steam]