PUBG halts its 50-player deathmatch mode after less than 24 hours because of server troubles

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The mode was stopping players from connecting to the game.

On Thursday evening, PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds launched its time-limited Desert Knights mode, a 50-player deathmatch pitting ten five-person teams against each other in a small corner of Miramar. It was meant to run until the end of the weekend, but on Friday afternoon developer Bluehole had to pull the plug early because it was messing up the game's servers and stopping players from connecting to PUBG altogether.

That's bad timing, to say the least. Players had less than 24 hours to try out the mode, and it didn't make it through to the weekend, which would have been peak playing time. I suppose the team had no choice but to pull it when they discovered that it was causing issues elsewhere, but that won't be much consolation to players that were eager to dive in. 

PUBG's first deathmatch mode, which ran last month, went a lot smoother, so here's hoping that the hiccup with Desert Knights was a one-off. My guess would be that Desert Knights will return soon, giving players that missed out another chance to play it. 

Samuel Horti
Samuel Horti

Samuel is a freelance journalist and editor who first wrote for PC Gamer nearly a decade ago. Since then he's had stints as a VR specialist, mouse reviewer, and previewer of promising indie games, and is now regularly writing about Fortnite. What he loves most is longer form, interview-led reporting, whether that's Ken Levine on the one phone call that saved his studio, Tim Schafer on a milkman joke that inspired Psychonauts' best level, or historians on what Anno 1800 gets wrong about colonialism. He's based in London.