PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds Custom Matches Could Require Purchase in Future – Report

PUBG Corp’s PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds has been facing one controversy after another since version 1.0 launched in December. Whether it’s the recent lawsuit against Epic Games (that has since been dropped) or the Sanhok Event Pass, the breakout battle royale doesn’t exactly have the best reputation these days.

At least it’s receiving custom matchmaking with a beta, now available for owners of the PC version. The beta is restricted to 10,000 concurrent running games to ensure stability, and is currently free. However, that may change down the line, according to the update notes.

“Creating custom matches won’t have an associated cost during this phase,” the notes read. “However, due to the extremely large amount of resources required to allow custom games to be available to all players, we may change this in the future to ensure everything runs smoothly and the system remains sustainable long-term. We’re open to your feedback on this system and we’ll have more details on this aspect of the system later.”

PUBG Corp hasn’t outright confirmed that custom matches will require a fee later. However, the implementation of microtransactions, loot boxes and an Event Pass (with items that can’t even be kept once the Pass expires) on top of the base price doesn’t help matters. This isn’t including all the performance issues that are still being addressed.

At the very least, it seems the developer is “open to feedback” regarding the system. We’ll have to wait and see how it pans out, since custom matches are usually free in most other full price games.