Totally Accurate Battlegrounds no longer free, has amassed three million downloads

Totally Accurate Battlegrounds started out as a late April fools' joke and parody of the battle royale genre. And then three million players downloaded it, including Austin, who punched cheese on his way to a no-kill victory (sort of). Now, as was planned, it's no longer free-to-play, and you'll have to pay $4.99/£3.99 for its shenanigans.

In a Steam post announcing the price change, as well as the three million milestone, developer Landfall said it was working on making the servers more stable, and that it "recommends anyone who feels hesitant about getting the game to wait until we have it sorted". It is also implementing anti-cheat measures.

As well as being a joke game, TABG is a side project for Totally Accurate Battle Simulator, or TABS, which looks like a fleshed-out strategy-based version of TABG. It doesn't yet have a release date.

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.