Harking back to the heady days of early access where it stood virtually unopposed in the fledgling Battle Royale genre, PUBG’s latest event mode sends players on a trip down memory lane. Suitably titled Early Access Memories, the mode brings back the ‘loot, rules, and nostalgia’ of the game’s lengthy sojourn in the early access listings on Steam.
Concretely, Early Access Memories has 100 players spread across 25 teams of four people battle it out on the classic Erangel map. Though stats and vaulting remain identical to today’s iteration of PUBG
Similarly to the good old days, damage sustained from the Blue Zone won’t increase exponentially depend ing on distance from the safe zone. Other changes mean jet skis won’t spawn and as players appear on the pre-match island they’ll have access to weapons like in the past. Cue impatient, consequence-free antics.
The event is currently live across all regions and runs until August 19th (20th – depending where you are in the world) at 7pm PST, 4am CEST, and 11am KST. Early Access Memories is available as third person on NA, EU, AS, KR, JP, SEAS, OC, and SA servers, while first person is limited to NA, EU, and AS.
Many would argue PUBG still feels very much like an Early Access title in its current form due to performance issues nestled among a litany of other problems. The idea of adapting old rules to the streamlined modern PUBG build does have its merits though, notably for PUBG Corp who must be eager to show off how far the game has come. The mode should appeal to the nostalgic earlier adopters who were involved when PUBG was systematically gaining new players and topping viewership charts on Twitch. Oh how times have changed.
