PUBG's deadlier blue zone has arrived: the farther you are from safety, the more damage you take

News
By published

The change doesn't apply to the first safe circle.

PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds' blue zone is now deadlier than ever thanks to a new patch, and the further you are from the safe zone on the map, the more damage you'll take over time. That won't apply to the first circle, though, which means you'll still be able to hike a fair distance in the blue zone early on and live to tell the tale. 

In case you weren't aware, PUBG's map has an ever-tightening play area. Anyone caught outside of that area is said to be in the blue zone, and gradually takes damage over time. Developer Bluehole announced last week that the blue zone would become more dangerous, although it didn't specify the exact mechanics. Now we know. The patch has been running on the test servers since Monday, and now it's live for everyone. It's roughly a 2GB download (fairly beefy, but that could be because you have to re-download existing assets).

The objective of the patch is to encourage more players to prioritise the safe zone, which should lead to more focused firefights. I think the way it's implemented should just about work: it will mean that players head for the circle earlier, which could speed up the action.

The wording on Bluehole's initial announcement suggested the patch was only for the test servers and wouldn't be live on the main servers until the game fully released (it said it "would merge improvements, bug fixes, and other features, all at once to the test servers, which will then be implemented cumulatively for the 1.0 release"), but there you have it.

What do you think of the change?

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.