PUBG Is “All In” on Big Maps for 2021

PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds is getting a new map for Season 10 called Haven, and among other points of interest that separate it from other battlegrounds, it just so happens to be the smallest map the game’s ever seen. It’s a one-by-one map filled with crowded city corners and unprecedented levels of verticality for PUBG and is considered an “event map” which means it won’t be sticking around permanently. It’s a far cry from the sprawling maps veteran players are used to, but for those who are worried about PUBG moving away its origins, PUBG Creative Director Dave Curd says the team is “all in” on big maps for 2021.

ComicBook.com spoke to Curd ahead of the big Season 10 reveal to learn more about what’s going on with these experimental maps and what the future holds for PUBG. Curd said that, at its core, PUBG is a survival game, not a shooter, and the team isn’t interested in shifting genres. They’re not deaf to the requests for big maps either, Curd said, and he confirmed those maps are 100% on the way.

“We totally understand,” Curd said of the community’s requests for bigger maps. “The main thing is we all agree big maps are the most PUBG, but we didn’t just want to just start making them just because we’ve already got Erangel. Hell, we’ve got a big map. The thought with this year of experimentation in play is we really wanted to find what the future of PUBG could be. We’re not going to take every lesson. We’re not going to take everything and directly apply it, but we’ve learned a lot. A lot of that stuff is going to show up in the next generation of big maps.”

As for why it’s so important for those sorts of maps to return, Curd said the feeling these sorts of maps generate for players help define what PUBG is all about. Larger maps provide ample opportunities for “downtime” where you’re looting and cruising around only to have that time disrupted by a firefight, and the PUBG team wants to make sure that kind of feeling stays intact.

“The 15 minutes of downtime, looting, and hanging out and driving with your friends only to be interrupted by just a chaotic out of nowhere gunfight, and then maybe you barely survive and res your friend and you’re back on the road for another 10 minutes,” Curd said about what he views as one of the main experiences offered by larger maps. “That’s the kind of stuff that a big map gives you. We are all in on larger worlds for 2021. The other stuff we’re looking at is protecting the core of PUBG, right? We’ve tried a lot of things. We’re experimenting. We’re playing, but we’re not interested in shifting genres.”

There’s no narrower timeframe for when we’ll see those bigger maps just yet beyond sometime in 2021, but players have Season 10 to look forward to soon ahead of those reveals. Season 10 is now available on the PC test servers and will come to the live servers for PC on December 16th and for consoles and Stadia on December 17th.