PUBG Mobile, the mobile version of the popular PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds, has achieved a pretty hefty milestone. According to a new tweet, it’s hit one billion downloads worldwide. The title released about three years ago for iOS and Android with its popularity only rising throughout.

An “awesome new update” is coming to celebrate the occasion so players are advised to stay tuned. Even with the popularity of the current game, a sequel called PUBG: New State is currently in development. It takes place in a near-future setting and will feature different weapons and vehicles.

There’s also The Callisto Protocol, developed by Striking Distance (led by Glen Schofield of Dead Space fame) and coming to Xbox Series X/S, PS5 and PC in 2022. Set in the PUBG universe’s future, it takes place on Callisto as players must escape from the nightmarish aliens in Black Iron Prison. We’re still yet to see gameplay, but Schofield promises it will be one of the “most terrifying games of all time.”

https://twitter.com/PUBGMOBILE/status/1373786682357657605

Though you might audibly groan at a game developer trying to break into mobile gaming, wondering what’s the point, there’s certainly a big market out there for it. According to App Annie in its Q2 2019 App Index report, 11.2 billion mobile games were downloaded between April to June 2019. The most popular platform was Google Play.

As such, games account for 35 percent of all global app downloads on mobile phones for the quarter. However, they also make up 75 percent of total consumer spending on both the Google Play Store and Apple App Store. Some of the bigger markets for Google Play downloads included India, Brazil, and the United States with Arcade, Action, and Casual being the top three categories for games.

On the Apple App Store, the United States was the biggest market, followed by China and Japan. Arcade, Action, and Puzzle were the top three game categories there. In terms of spending, Fate/Grand Order was on top, followed by Honour of Kings and Candy Crush Saga. However, for average monthly active users, it was PUBG Mobile that topped the pack.

PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds may have fallen way behind its direct competitor Fortnite as far as popularity and mindshare are concerned, but as it turns out, its free-to-play mobile variant is doing very well for itself. Apparntly, PUBG Mobile’s total playerbase is equal to that of Fortnite.

This was confirmed to The Verge, who’re reporting that PUBG Mobile has 200 million users across iOS and Android devices. Fortnite, as you might remember, hit 200 million total users worldwide late last month. The report also mentions that both PUBG Mobile and Fortnite have 30 million active players every day. What’s interesting is that the numbers tallied up for PUBG Mobile do not include its massive playerbase in China, which would likely push it far beyond Fortnite. 

It’s also worth noting that these figures are for PUBG Mobile only, and not for the game’s console and PC versions. It goes to show that as a free-to-play title, PUBG has quite the backbone, as far as going toe-to-toe with Fortnite is concerned. Back in August, it was reported that it had hit 100 million total downloads, so its growth is impressive to see as well.

PUBG Mobile, the surprisingly competent (and very successful, with over 100 million downloads across iOS and Android) mobile adaptation of PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds, the popular battle royale game, has received a brand new patch. Update 0.9.0 brings to the game a host of Halloween content, as well as a bunch of other improvements and additions to the game.

Said improvements and changes include a night mode added to Erangel, night vision goggles, a movie picture style option added to the settings menu, new matchmaking options, a spectator mode, a whole bunch of changes made to weapon balance and tuning, changes made to in game purchases and economy, and changes made to how the game performs. There’s a whole raft of improvements here for you to make your way through, so make sure to check out the full patch notes for the new update for yourself here.

Apart from being on mobile, a more full fledged version of PUBG is also on PC and Xbox One, with a PS4 version possible coming as well. So there’s enough battle royale to go around for everyone.