Criticism Of Chinese Players On PUBG Explodes On Steam

PlayerUnknowns Battlegrounds and China

PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds officially opened the retail doors to the Chinese market. With it legitimately going on sale in the country, the developers made the decision to allow server sharing with ‘Western’ players. It was at this point that the problems started.

Since then the Steam community boards have been flooded with complaints. Why? Because a high portion of gamers feel that a significant number of the Chinese players are cheating.

The problem with PUBG and cheaters is, in fairness, well known. Even in China. We recently reported how ‘mob justice’ had taken over in internet cafes when cheaters were caught in the act.

A quick peruse of the Steam discussions board, however, clearly shows that ‘western’ gamers are not fans of the Chinese influx and have even called for a blanket banning of all Chinese players or at the very least, a region locking.

PUBG and Cheaters

A current post in Chinese on the discussions forum has garnered over 300 responses so far. Now, I can’t understand the Chinese so I have no idea what most of it is all about, but the majority of English speakers fall into 3 categories. They either want region-locking for China, they want all Chinese players removed or the third fall into a fringe racist category which unfortunately undermines some of the more valid comments.

A video has even appeared showing aim-botting, calling it the ‘China experience’.

From my perspective, it’s a tricky point. I totally appreciate how a great game can be ruined by prevalent cheating. CoD MW2 on the PC was ruined online by cheaters. Similarly, Dark Souls has/had problems too. The current ‘China Problem’, however, does clearly seem to be one of significant concern to the community.

Some have gone as far to say that the cheating issue is so bad that if the developers do not do something soon, they’re going to lose their honest player base very quickly.

I’m certainly not saying that cheating has only just started since China joined, but it seems clear that a significant portion of the community thinks it just got a whole lot worse.

What do you think? Should China be region locked? Is it just a case of bad players blaming cheating? What is your solution? – Let us know in the comments!