Bluehole Institutes Bans for Editing PUBG’s Game Files

It seems PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds makes people angry as a matter of course. The game’s latest update added fog to the main map. The effect reduces sight range across most of the map which didn’t sit all that well with some top-tier players. So, some have found a way to eliminate the fog effect by tinkering with the game’s files. Not that surprisingly, you can now get banned for that kind of game modification.

Guess how that was received? The problem with the fog is that it’s triggered by post-processing. In order to make sure it’s not removed, Bluehole enforced mandatory post-processing, making editing the ini file a necessary to prevent it. Now, since this heavily affects performance, players were none too pleased with this addition. Especially considering every frame matters at high levels of play in an FPS. The thing that compounded the issue is that these settings also blurred the image quality a bit. I can’t imagine anyone complaining about that.

Wait, it gets worse.

The new ban policy wasn’t really announced, it was just quietly added to the FAQ. The change reads: “editing any game files to gain an unfair advantage is against the Rules of Conduct. This includes changing any game configuration files to result in changes that cannot be made via the in-game settings menu.” It’s hardly a surprising rule, or an uncommon one, but the way it was “announced” plus the clumsy implementation has the community in the uproar.

Obviously, the fog isn’t, and probably shouldn’t be, something you can simply turn off in multiplayer (especially if only you are affected by the change), but Bluehole will need to find a better way to implement it.

Let’s hope the upcoming PlayerUnknown AMA has some positive news for the community.