PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds has sprouted an idler problem—that is, players who join matches but don't actually play, letting their characters die while they accrue in-game currency just by being there. This allows the idlers to buy items to sell on the marketplace without putting in the hours of actual playtime everyone else does, and hampers the experience of genuine players.
It's not clear just from anecdotal evidence exactly how big the problem is: what we know is that multiple players have reported seeing a dozen or so idlers at a time in their matches, and that it is a viable way to earn battle points. In a recent story on the issue, Evan managed to find 13 to 14 idlers in a first-person PUBG server by waiting for the plane to eject him at the end of its route.
Today at PAX West 2017, Evan had the opportunity to ask Battlegrounds producer Chang-Han Kim how developer Bluehole plans to deal with AFKers. In short, Kim says that while not many people are AFKing right now, the developers do want to implement some kind of change to stop it. That may be a matter of adjusting how players earn battle points, or "preventing AFKs as a whole."
"It's something we will definitely be addressing," he added. You can hear Kim's full response, as translated by business lead Hyowon Yoo, in the video above.
