PUBG: Battlegrounds, originally named PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds, has been successful since it launched in early access in March 2017. PUBG marked a paradigm shift, ushering in an age of massively successful battle royale games. PUBG was, ultimately, overtaken by Epic Games' Fortnite battle royale, in no small part due to an up-front price that Fortnite did not have. It's always begged the question: how would PUBG perform as a free-to-play game? The answer is extremely well.
PUBG Corp. parent company Krafton has announced that PUBG: Battlegrounds saw a growth rate of nearly 500% following the launch of the battle royale into free-to-play. Krafton says that this is a faster growth rate than when PUBG first launched, which is quite understandable given PUBG took quite some time to build to its initial success. That just goes to show how important a free-to-play monetization format can be in terms of immediate growth.
Krafton also says that growth in specific regions has been dramatic. Regions including Eastern Europe and Asia, Southeast Asia, and South America have apparently seen growth rates of around 537%, implying the premium price for PUBG was inhibitive to key demographics. The free-to-play shift will allow those players to play PUBG after wanting to, but being unable. And in doing so, will likely bring them into PUBG's new monetization systems in a way just as lucrative as the premium price.
While PUBG may have seen a dramatic increase in players since it launched as a free-to-play game, it has not seen the kind of numbers that it did at launch -- or even for years after its launch. According to Steam tracking service SteamDB, concurrent players for PUBG since the free-to-play change have topped out around 700,000. That's a number last regularly seen around August 2019. At its height, PUBG had over 3 million concurrent players on Steam, which was around January 2018.
Also, while PUBG did spike to around 700,000 for a time, those numbers have already started to fall as the free-to-play launch buzz starts to fade. PUBG's current concurrent player totals are closer to 500,000. They aren't dropping rapidly, but they do seem to be shrinking. Prior to the free-to-play launch, PUBG saw daily concurrent users topping out at around 350,000.
Time will tell if PUBG: Battlegrounds is able to maintain its new momentum gained from the free-to-play launch. PC isn't the only platform that PUBG is on, after all. PUBG's performance on PS4 and Xbox One could be significantly better. PUBG may not be reclaiming the chicken dinner any time soon, but it clearly has some good years left before it.
PUBG: Battlegrounds is available now on Mobile, PC, PS4, Stadia, and Xbox One.
Source: SteamDB
