This new ransomware seems to really want you to play PUBG

If you’ve yet to dive into the gaming phenomenon that is PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds (PUBG), then this new piece of ransomware will make sure that happens.

Ransomware, or malware that holds your files hostage under encryption until you meet its demands, generally just wants some of your money. However, this piece of ransomware discovered by MalwareHunterTeam on Twitter simply wants you to play PUBG for an hour.

Simply dubbed ‘PUBG Ransomware’ (real original, folks), this software will encrypt all of your computer’s desktop files and folders and append the ‘.PUBG’ extension to them. Then, a screen will appear, giving you two outs from this miniature hell.

You either just play PUBG for an hour… or you enter a complex code displayed plainly on the screen to get your files decrypted and returned to your desktop like normal.

According to Bleeping Computer, this ransomware works by scanning your computer’s running processes for the ‘TslGame’ process, which assumedly triggers whenever you launch the PUBG app. However, the same outlet also discovered that you really only need to run the PUBG app for three seconds, not one hour.

Furthermore, you can even spoof this apparently simply-built ransomware by running Command Prompt on Windows and typing ‘TslGame.exe’ and pressing ‘Enter’.

This seems to be one of the most innocuous pieces of ransomware we’ve seen, as creator appears to want more people to grief in PUBG. However, it's never nice to have your files and folders hijacked by any software, no matter how innocent it appears to be.

Either that, or this could be a surprising (if awfully invasive and subversive) guerrilla marketing tactic – we kid!

• PUBG sits in our pantheon of the best PC games

Via Kotaku