PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds is not just popular in the United States. The battle royale style game is wildly popular in China. According to Youxi Story, the country is host to almost half of the active players in PUBG. The same article also claims 99 percent of banned cheaters in the game are from China. Although it is worth mentioning that now that Valve has disabled data gathering from its Steam platform, this statistic is very hard to verify.

Regardless, with these last-count demographics, it should probably not be surprising that Dell has made an unusual marketing move in China. According to Australia-based PCPowerPlay, Dell indirectly boasted that its newest laptops are ideal for cheating at PUBG.

At an Intel 8th-gen event in Beijing, a Dell spokesperson claimed that the new G-Series laptops would allow PUBG players to "run more plugins to win more at Chicken Dinner." The problem with this is that using any PUBG-specific plugin would constitute cheating. What else would using plugins to win chicken dinners be if not cheating?

It could be that the spokesperson was ignorant of that fact and it was just a happy "coincidence" that he happened to chose that peculiar wording while speaking to the PUBG cheating capital of the world, but that's an awful to of ignorance to claim. The company certainly did not make such a boast when it introduced the G-Series to US customers.

Of course, Dell has officially denounced the comment and professes it does not condone cheating in any game.

"Dell is fully committed to supporting fair play in online gaming. We do not encourage nor endorse any behavior that undermines fair gaming practices. Dell has a strong track record in partnering with gaming teams, aiming at providing world-class gamers with the ultimate experience. In an attempt to communicate the power of the new Dell G Series, inappropriate modification examples were used in Dell's product launch event in China last week. This does not reflect our global gaming culture or strategy. We condemn any modifications misused in gaming."

Dell's response only came after the incident picked up traction on the PUBG forums and the Battlegrounds subreddit (Reddit post was removed due to political and racial trolling).

Nothing beats a little damage control after your mouthpiece makes a terrible gaffe.