PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds is ‘on track’ to leave Early Access in late December

The battle royal military shooter PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds isn’t finished yet, but developer Bluehole Studio says it is on pace to complete it by “late December.” This would take the last-player-standing multiplayer hit to its full 1.0 release state — although Early Access hasn’t prevented it from reaching the most-streamed game on Twitch last quarter.

Bluehole still hasn’t specified what a 1.0 release will entail, but the company has promised features like vaulting over obstacles and improvements to stability and performance for a long time now. Since March, the studio has sold PUBG through the Steam Early Access portal for games in development. Despite its development status, however, PUBG has attracted a huge audience of more than 13 million players around the world.

If the PC version goes live at the end of December, this will fulfill one of promises of Brendan “PlayerUnknown” Greene, who is the creator and creative director of PUBG. In July, Greene said that he doesn’t like games that stay in Early Access for multiple years, so he said that it was “a matter of honor” to launch the 1.0 version before the end of 2017.

The retail PC release will also hit weeks after PUBG launches December 12 on Xbox One. The shooter is finally hitting Microsoft’s console as part of that platform’s Early Access-like Game Preview program. The Xbox One version is a different fork with its own roadmap, according to Bluehole, so it won’t hit 1.0 at the same time as the PC fork.

Getting the game out of Early Access and onto console are two huge accomplishments for Bluehole, but ongoing problems with cheaters and hackers could spoil any celebration for Bluehole.