The new free-to-play mobile game PUBG: New State will be released on iOS and Android on November 11th, according to its publisher Krafton. The game is set in the year 2051 and will contain new elements like weapon customisation and in-game drones, as well as a future twist on the multiplayer-focused PUBG concept. At launch, New State will be available in more than 200 countries and 17 languages.
The release of New State is a key milestone for the PUBG franchise, which popularized the battle royale genre with the release of its debut game in 2017. New State isn’t the game’s first mobile entry, but it is the first from the game’s original creator, PUBG Studios, following the release of PUBG Mobile in 2018. Tencent, a Chinese tech behemoth, was largely responsible for the development of the original PUBG Mobile.
New State will come with “strong anti-cheat” features at launch, according to PUBG Studios, and the studio will carefully monitor the community to detect problems before they become too prevalent.
Cheaters have been a major issue in the past for the PUBG games, with Motherboard reporting earlier this year that one cheat-making organization reportedly generated over $70 million selling PUBG Mobile hacks. However, PUBG is far from the first game to experience similar issues. Activision and Valve, for example, have lately made headlines for their attempts to combat cheating in their games and hardware, respectively.
New State, like previous PUBG games, is built around multiplayer gameplay. A map can include up to 100 players, and only one person or squad emerges triumphant. New State will start with four maps, including series classic Erangel, and PUBG Studios promises that it will be frequently updated with new content over time.
Aside from mobile, according to Bloomberg in January, Krafton wants to develop another PUBG-related game for PC and consoles by next year. There are also ideas for a new survival horror game set three centuries in the future in the PUBG world to be released in 2022.
