Watching the rise and fall of Player Unknown’s Battlegrounds (Free) (or PUBG) under the shadow of Fortnite (Free) has been something else. For those who haven’t been paying attention, PUBG launched on the PC in early 2017 via Steam’s Early Access where it saw seemingly instant success. The game rapidly took over Twitch, with many of the most popular streamers who had built their fan bases around streaming other games all shifted gears to PUBG. In December of 2017 PUBG was “officially" released on the PC as well as the Xbox One, trailing behind Fortnite’s battle royale mode which came out in September. (I still vastly prefer PUBG over other battle royale games, as the whole gritty military style just appeals to me more as a long-time Counter-Strike and Battlefield player.)
For whatever reason, it seems Fortnite has absolutely dominated PUBG’s positioning in the battle royale scene, particularly on Twitch, but that doesn’t mean PUBG still isn’t immensely popular. Additionally, it seems that mobile players are almost entirely responsible for propping up that popularity. In a media alert sent out today, PUBG is boasting over 400 million players worldwide spread across all platforms, with 227 million monthly active players. Where things get weird is PUBG PR refuses to provide what sort of platform split those massive numbers come from, but it’s not hard to do a little math and make some incredibly reasonable assumptions.
As part of the same announcement, PUBG has sold over 50 million units on the PC and Xbox One, leaving 350 million of that stat unaccounted for from platforms like kakao (mobile), DMM (mobile), iOS, and Android. PUBG is also distributed on Mail.ru, but it’s hard to believe that is putting much of a dent in any of these stats. Therefore, it’s super easy to assume that the remainder of the units are likely all mobile installs- Nearly 90% of the player base, in fact. Additionally, if we take the 227 million monthly active players, and make the unrealistic assumption that all 50 million people who bought the game on PC or Xbox One are still actively playing, the PUBG mobile playerbase consists of at least 80% of their total active players.
Rounding all this out, we can come to the very realistic conclusion that while PUBG started as a hardcore PC game on Twitch, it has since transformed to be a super popular mobile game with a tiny niche PC/console component. But, hey, if you want to play that tiny niche version of PUBG, it’s on 33% off on Steam today.
What a time to be alive.
I only have an Android phone so I have little to compare on the other platform versions or Fortnite, but I can confidently say that PUBG mobile is killing it.
tried to play fortnite on my 2017 ipad, it was a low resolution stuttering mess. I uninstalled it in less than a minute. PUBG on the other hand is great
https://uploads.disquscdn.c...
PUBG is Free?? LoL..
The main version of PUBG is, yes.
No it's not. The Main version of PUBG, the PC version.. cost you about 20 USD (they on sale right now).
Please check your fact. The article said PlayerUknown's Battleground.. not PlayerUnknown's Battleground Mobile.. (And on Mobile they call it PUBG Mobile). So you talking about the PC version or Console version.. and it's not free.
This is the version of PUBG most people play, seems more appropriate to specify when you’re talking about the significantly less popular niche version on PC/Xbox.
So you guys just assume people now and call PUBG Mobile by the wrong name? If your article just focus on PUBG Mobile maybe it's ok to call it like that. But since your article focus on both PUBG and PUBG Mobile, you have to clarify which is which. If not why on Google Play and App Store they dont that the game "PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds" like PC version? Is this a gaming website with official news and facts or just a tabloid just want to clickbait and cause controversies? You do know the responsibility of a journalist is to tell the truth right?
We are telling the truth that’s why when we mention the lesser popular version of PUBG we make sure to clarify we are talking about the niche version not many people play.
Yes, the most popular game on Steam and one of the top 5 best selling games in PC history is niche. Lol, just because PUBG Mobile is Huge doesn't take away from how big PUBG Pc still is. In fact the PC version of PUBG has about double the amount of Fortnite PC players, just to put it into perspective.
surprise, android is the best optimized this game