This game originally came out on Garena (basically a steam type platform in Asia)at the start of 2018. It came with a different map where everyone hand glided down from a plane much like the usual Battle Royale genre.
The map was roughly the same size as this snow map (if I can remember right) and ended as usual with the last one survives theme and this had a few of us hooked for a few months until it went offline in June of this year, promising to return soon.
It was a breath of fresh air after playing the same old grind of PubG and we were trying all sorts of games until we found news that Ring of Elysium had been released again end of August on the Garena platform, but only in 3 Asian areas, which meant lots of location changing and translating but no need for a VPN at that time, but the game was back with a new map and playable (in a fashion) but with some degree of lag as expected.
Then obviously the news that it was to be released on Steam but only Asia and N America to start with.
For an early 'free' release this game is awesome with so much more to offer than other games of the same genre and to be fair it doesn't play half bad on American servers even though you can add around 100 ping as far as other games are concerned.
I hope the first map makes its appearance soon because I'm not 100% sold on the helicopter ending but its still good fun and I hope the EU servers hurry up because its then that you can measure your game skill as opposed to lag kills.