Playerunknown’s Battlegrounds, better known as PUBG and currently PUBG: Battlegrounds, is probably one of the biggest video game releases and success stories to exist in gaming, with the series becoming so big that it got itself multiple offshoots, including two mobile counterparts called PUBG Mobile and PUBG: New State, and an upcoming horror game set in the PUBG universe with The Callisto Protocol. Of course, the biggest surprise anyone could’ve got was the recent announcement of the game going free-to-play on Steam.
Well, it looks like that actually benefitted the game, as PUBG Studios recently shared via press release that upon going free-to-play, the game experienced its biggest growth in years, at a whopping 486 percent increase in new players. The milestone is being counted for the PC player base, where the game is more popular than its console counterparts. In more detail, the developers mentioned the following:
“In the week following the F2P transition, the game saw a 486% increase in new players, outpacing its 2017 player growth rate. Furthermore, new user growth increased at a higher rate percentage (537%) in specific territories, such as the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), Southeast Asia, and South America. Additionally, the game has seen significant increases in average playtime when compared to the week prior to F2P, with average playtime on PC and consoles increased by 100% week-over-week while PlayStation players recorded a 400% increase in playtime.”
As of writing this article, the game has 24-hour concurrent player peak of over 515,000 players. It might not be as huge as the all-time peak of 3,257,248 players from back in 2018, but at the same time, it is great to see that the title is having great success in its free-to-play iteration.