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PUBG’s new map Deston was first pitched four years ago

PUBG's creative director Dave Curd tells The Loadout how he's wanted a high rise map like Deston for years in the popular battle royale

PUBG new map Deston: A skyscraper and a wind turbine are half-submerged by flood water in PUBG map Deston

PUBG: Battlegrounds fans have long been waiting to get their hands on Deston, the new 8x8km map hitting the game today. Fans have known about the map, codenamed Kiki, for little over a year now – but the idea was actually conceived around four years ago, around the same time as Sanhok.

“We’ve been wanting to make a high rise map forever,” PUBG’s creative director Dave Curd tells The Loadout. “I remember pitching both Sanhok and a downtown style map almost four years ago. Haven was our first swing at the idea and it gave us a lot of key learnings.”

But Deston is a world apart from Haven. While size is the obvious differentiator here – Deston is eight times bigger – the map has several different biomes, from vertical sprawling cities to rolling hills and dense swamps. It’s been designed to not only as “combat contrasts” to force players to switch their playstyle up mid match, but as a way of ensuring that the final circle – wherever it lands – offers something different every time you play.

“With 8×8 maps, we need to provide varied terrain types with a wide-range of engagement opportunities,” Curd says. “They also have to say something new by being visually unique while entertaining the player with places to explore, new mechanics, and everything else that makes a large PUBG map great.”

To further make the new map stand out, the development team has created bespoke traversal mechanics just for Deston. Ascenders, which are basically just vertical ziplines, emergency parachutes, and cell towers all offer players a chance to get quickly and efficiently across the map.

“The futuristic nature of Deston allowed for the dev team to get creative with mechanics that we’ve been experimenting with and we can’t wait to see how players implement them throughout matches,” Curd adds.

Deston launches on PC today (July 13). The console version will go live on July 27.