‘PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds’ Getting Official Zombies Mode Controlled By Players

PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds has already blown up into a huge sensation via Steam Early Access and is coming to the Xbox One later this year. The developers behind the battle royale title announced at E3 2017 it is taking a popular Zombies custom game mode and turning it into an officially supported feature.

Developer Bluehole added the ability for some of their streaming partners to create custom games in PlayerUnknown’s Battleground recently. This will be rolled out to the public at a later date, but allows players to change match settings such as loot, starting equipment, and other options. Zombies quickly grew into such a popular custom mode among the community that the developers decided to support it.

For those that don’t know, Battlegrounds drops 100 players onto an island to battle to the last man standing. Weapons, ammo, and other supplies are scattered throughout the map to help individual players survive.

The Zombies custom game mode twists the battle royale concept by designating the majority of the players as weapon-less zombies with a handful of regular human players capable of defending themselves.

Bluehole is adding new zombie character models and animations to Battlegrounds as part of the official support. There are male and female zombies with custom attack animations that include very zombie-like bites.

A new set of match customizations will be added to Battlegrounds separate from the main game to support the Zombies game mode. The developer assures fans that work will continue optimizing the game as it gets ready for official release later this year on both the PC and Xbox One.

Server optimizations, in particular, are the current focus, but additional features are coming like the ability for players to bring up a replay of an entire match. Meanwhile, the June update promises new weapons like the one in the following Twitter post from Creative Director Brendan Greene.

https://twitter.com/BattleRoyaleMod/status/874394721224990720

The story of the zombies mode officially coming to PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds is striking similar to a similar mode in the Halo franchise. Halo 2 players came up with the concept of a Zombies mode where players would become “infected” and switch teams after being killed. Bungie introduced this as the officially supported Infection mode in Halo 3 due to its popularity and variants of it were used in Halo 4.

What do you think of the Zombies custom game mode coming to PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds? Sound off in the comments below.

Inspired by @PUBGpartners on @Twitch, zombies are coming to PUBG. There's no ETA yet but here's a sneak peek. #PUBGxE3 pic.twitter.com/IKKAZnl4Ml

— PUBG: BATTLEGROUNDS (@PUBG) June 13, 2017

[Featured Image by Bluehole]