Enlarge / This is what PUBG on console feels like right now. At least, without the “hookers and blackjack.” Sorry, Bender army. (credit: Aurich Lawson)

This week, Google Stadia emerged with a surprise announcement of a pretty big game launching immediately: Playerunknown’s Battlegrounds (PUBG). Say what you will about the game’s age or its arguably dated take on battle royale, but PUBG still enjoys a healthy population of PC and console players. And now, it’s included with paid Stadia Pro subscriptions (which includes the new two-month trials that dropped earlier this month) and supports cross-play with a healthy population of Xbox One and PlayStation 4 players.

But what could have been a no-brainer blip of good Stadia news has been bungled by a design decision that’s sparking frustration and annoyance and is even affecting the existing console versions: new, stupid, spawn-out-of-nowhere bots.

98 problems, and a bot is… all of them

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  Stadia hopes that you like its color motif, since you can claim a cosmetic package for the game as a Stadia Pro player.

After hearing reports about a surprising bot influx on Tuesday, I booted PUBG using my Stadia Pro account on a laptop to confirm the bad news. I took an angry Redditor’s advice and jumped into a less popular matchmaking queue in order to guarantee I’d run into at least a few bots: a “first-person” solo-battling queue on the newly reworked Vikendi map.