PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds
PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds
PlayerUnknown's
Battlegrounds (PUBG)
is an online multiplayer battle royale game developed
and published by PUBG Corporation,
a subsidiary of South Korean video game
company Bluehole. The
game is based on previous mods that
were created by Brendan "PlayerUnknown" Greene for other games,
inspired by the 2000 Japanese film Battle Royale,
and expanded into a standalone game under Greene's creative direction. In the
game, up to one hundred players parachute onto an island and scavenge for
weapons and equipment to kill others while avoiding getting killed themselves.
The available safe area of the game's map decreases in size over time,
directing surviving players into tighter areas to force encounters. The last
player or team standing wins the round.
PUBG was first released for Microsoft Windows via Steam's early access beta program in March 2017, with a
full release in December 2017. The game was also released by Microsoft Studios for the Xbox One via its Xbox Game Preview program that same month, and
officially released in September 2018. PUBG Mobile, a free-to-play mobile game version for Android and iOS,
was released in 2018, in addition to a port for the PlayStation 4. A version for the Stadia streaming platform was released in April
2020. PUBG is one of the best-selling, highest-grossing and most-played video games of
all time. The game has sold over 70 million copies
on personal computers and game consoles as of 2020, in addition to PUBG
Mobile accumulating 734 million downloads
and grossing over $4.3 billion on mobile devices as of December 2020.
PUBG received positive reviews from critics, who found
that while the game had some technical flaws, it presented new types of
gameplay that could be easily approached by players of any skill level and was
highly replayable. The game was attributed to popularizing the battle royale
genre, with a number of unofficial Chinese clones also being produced following its
success. The game also received several Game of
the Year nominations, among other accolades. PUBG Corporation
has run several small tournaments and introduced in-game tools to help with
broadcasting the game to spectators, as they wish for it to become a
popular esport. The game has also been banned in
some countries for allegedly being harmful and addictive to
younger players.
Gameplay
Battlegrounds is a player versus player shooter game in
which up to one hundred players fight in a battle royale, a type of large-scale last man standing deathmatch where
players fight to remain the last alive. Players can choose to enter the match
solo, duo, or with a small team of up to four people. The last person or team
alive wins the match.[1]
Each match starts with players
parachuting from a plane onto one of the four maps, with areas of approximately
8 × 8 kilometres (5.0 × 5.0 mi), 6 × 6
kilometres (3.7 × 3.7 mi), and 4 × 4 kilometres (2.5 × 2.5 mi)
in size.[2] The
plane's flight path across the map varies with each round, requiring players to
quickly determine the best time to eject and parachute to the ground.[1] Players
start with no gear beyond customized clothing selections which do not affect
gameplay. Once they land, players can search buildings, ghost towns and
other sites to find weapons, vehicles, armor, and other equipment. These items are
procedurally distributed throughout the map at the start of a match, with
certain high-risk zones typically having better equipment.[1] Killed
players can be looted to acquire their gear as well.[1] Players
can opt to play either from the first-person or third-person perspective, each having
their own advantages and disadvantages in combat and situational awareness;
though server-specific settings can be used to force all players into one
perspective to eliminate some advantages.[3]
Every few minutes, the playable
area of the map begins to shrink down towards a random location, with any
player caught outside the safe area taking damage incrementally, and eventually
being eliminated if the safe zone is not entered in time; in game, the players
see the boundary as a shimmering blue wall that contracts over time.[4] This
results in a more confined map, in turn increasing the chances of encounters.[1] During
the course of the match, random regions of the map are highlighted in red and
bombed, posing a threat to players who remain in that area.[5] In
both cases, players are warned a few minutes before these events, giving them
time to relocate to safety.[6] A
plane will fly over various parts of the playable map occasionally at random,
or wherever a player uses a flare gun,
and drop a loot package, containing items which are typically unobtainable
during normal gameplay. These packages emit highly visible red smoke, drawing
interested players near it and creating further confrontations.[1][7] On
average, a full round takes no more than 30 minutes.[6]
At the completion of each round,
players gain in-game currency based on their
performance. The currency is used to purchase crates which contain cosmetic items for
character or weapon customization.[8] A
rotating "event mode" was added to the game in March 2018. These events
change up the normal game rules, such as establishing larger teams or squads,
or altering the distribution of weapons and armor across the game map.[9]
Development
The game's
concept and design was led by Brendan Greene, better known by his online handle
PlayerUnknown, who had previously created the ARMA 2 mod DayZ:
Battle Royale, an offshoot of popular mod DayZ, and inspired by the 2000 Japanese
film Battle Royale.[10][11] At the time he created DayZ:
Battle Royale, around 2013, Irish-born Greene had been living in Brazil for
a few years as a photographer, graphic designer, and web designer, and played
video games such as Delta Force: Black Hawk
Down and America's Army.[12][13] The DayZ mod caught
his interest, both as a realistic military simulation and its open-ended
gameplay, and started playing around with a custom server, learning programming
as he went along.[12] Greene found most multiplayer
first-person shooters too repetitive, considering maps small and easy to
memorize. He wanted to create something with more random aspects so that
players would not know what to expect, creating a high degree of replayability;
this was done by creating vastly larger maps that could not be easily
memorized, and using random item placement across it.[14] Greene was also inspired by an online
competition for DayZ called Survivor GameZ, which
featured a number of Twitch and YouTube streamers fighting
until only a few were left; as he was not a streamer himself, Greene wanted to
create a similar game mode that anyone could play.[14] His initial efforts on this mod were
more inspired by The Hunger Games novels, where players would
try to vie for stockpiles of weapons at a central location, but moved away from
this partially to give players a better chance at survival by spreading weapons
around, and also to avoid copyright issues with the novels.[11] In taking inspiration from the Battle
Royale film, Greene had wanted to use square safe areas, but his
inexperience in coding led him to use circular safe areas instead, which
persisted to Battlegrounds.[11]
When DayZ became
its own standalone title,
interest in his ARMA 2 version of the Battle Royale mod
trailed off, and Greene transitioned development of the mod to ARMA 3.[12] Sony Online Entertainment (now
the Daybreak Game Company)
had become interested in Greene's work, and brought him on as a consultant to
develop on H1Z1, licensing the battle royale idea from him.[12] In February 2016, Sony Online
split H1Z1 into two separate games, the survival mode H1Z1: Just Survive,
and the battle royale-like H1Z1: King of the Kill,
around the same time that Greene's consultation period was over.[15]
Separately, the Seoul-based
studio Ginno Games, led by Chang-han Kim and who developed massively
multiplayer online games (MMOs) for personal computers, was
acquired and renamed Bluehole Ginno Games by Bluehole in January 2015, a major
South Korean publisher of MMOs and mobile games.[16][17] Kim recognized that producing a
successful game in South Korea generally meant it would be published globally,
and wanted to use his team to create a successful title for personal computers
that followed the same model as other mobile games published by Bluehole. He
had already been excited about making a type of battle royale game after he had
played DayZ, in part that the format had not caught on in Korea. He
also wanted to make this through an early access model and have a very limited
development schedule to get the game out as quickly as possible, while treating
the product as a "games as a service"
model to be able to support it for many years.[16] In researching what had been done, he
came across Greene's mods and reached out to him.[16] In July 2017, Bluehole partnered
with social media platform Facebook to provide exclusive streaming content
to Facebook's gaming channels, as part of their push to provide more gaming
content for its users.[18]
Around the same time that Greene
left Sony Online, Kim contacted and offered him the opportunity to work on a
new battle royale concept. Within a week, Greene flew out to Bluehole's
headquarters in Korea to discuss the options, and a few weeks later, became the
creative director of Bluehole. He moved to South Korea to oversee development.[14] According to Greene, this was the
first time a Korean game studio had brought aboard a foreigner for a creative
director role, and while a risk, he says that his relationship with Bluehole's
management is strong, allowing Greene's team to work autonomously with minimal
oversight.[6] The game's main musical theme was
composed by Tom Salta, who
was personally selected by Greene as he and the team were looking for an
"orchestral electronic hybrid theme" that would give players a
"huge build-up", keeping them "resolutely determined" until
a match starts.[19]
Development began in early 2016
and was publicly announced that June, with plans to have the game ready within
a year.[20][21] Kim served as executive producer for
the game.[14] Bluehole started with a team of about
35 developers supporting Greene's work, but had expanded to 70 by June 2017.[22] Greene stated that many of these
developers were voluntarily putting in longer work hours into the game due to
their dedication to the project, and not by any mandate from himself or
Bluehole's management.[14][23] In addition to Bluehole, Greene also
credits Bohemia Interactive,
the developers of ARMA and DayZ, for support
with motion capture animations
via their Prague studio.[23][22]
With the rapid growth of interest
in the game, Bluehole spun out the entire development for Battlegrounds into
Bluehole Ginno Games in September 2017, which was renamed PUBG Corporation with
Kim as its chief executive officer.
PUBG Corporation continued the development of the game and its marketing and
growth, opening an office in the United States with plans for future ones in
Europe and Japan.[24] In August 2018, PUBG Corporation
launched the "Fix PUBG" campaign, acknowledging that that game by
then still had several lingering bugs and other performance issues.[25] The campaign finished in November,
with PUBG Corporation calling it a success as everything listed had been
implemented by then.[26]
In March 2019, Greene announced
that he was stepping down as the game's lead designer, but would still serve as
a creative consultant. Tae-seok Jang, the game's art director, would replace
him, with Green relocating to PUBG's studio in Amsterdam, PUBG Special Projects.[27] Greene stated that he believed the
main Battlegrounds team was at a place to continue developing
the game in the direction he had set to keep the game unique among the other
battle royale games it had launched, and he wanted to try something not tied to
battle royale but still multiplayer-based. The move also put him closer to his
family in Ireland.[28]
Design
Battlegrounds represents the standalone version of what Greene
believes is the "final version" of the battle royale concept,
incorporating the elements he had designed in previous iterations.[6][29] Faster development was possible with
the game engine Unreal Engine 4,
compared with ARMA and H1Z1, which were built with
proprietary game engines. Greene acknowledged that implementing the size of the
maps in Battlegrounds has been one of the challenges with
working with Unreal, which was not designed with such maps in mind.[6][12] The game was designed as a mix between
the realistic simulation of ARMA 3 and the arcade-like action
focus and player accessibility of H1Z1.[5] To prevent in-game cheating,
the game uses the "BattlEye" anti-cheating software, which had
permanently banned over 13 million players by October 2018.[30][31] BattlEye indicated that 99% of all
cheating software for the game was developed in China.[32]
Based on Greene's experience with
the genre, an island with many terrain features was picked as the first map,
known as "Erangel".[11] The map design scope was to offer
players many possible options for strategic and unique gameplay.[4] Some buildings and structures were
designed to depict the style of the brutalist architecture of
the Soviet Union during
the 1950s. The developer team playtested architecture features and random item
placement systems, looking at both how close-quarters encounters went, and for
open terrain areas.[4] The goal was to optimize the right
distribution and placement of weapons and gear across the map, to encourage
players to make strategic decisions about how to proceed in the game without
overly penalizing players who may not find weapons within the first few minutes
of a round.[6] During early access, additional maps
were planned, such as one set on a fictional island in the Adriatic Sea that
included snow-covered Yugoslavian territories.[33][22] Greene stated that he thought the
Erangel map felt disjointed despite meeting their goals for gameplay, and
sought to create more unified ideas with future maps.[11]
The freefall from an airplane at
the start of each match was a new feature for the genre, to encourage strategy
between staying with the pack of players or seeking out one's own route for a
better chance at finding good loot.[6] With the added parachute drop, Greene
considered that Battlegrounds had three distinct subgames: the
airdrop during which one must quickly figure out the best time to jump and
where to land in relationship to the other players, the loot game of knowing
where and how to gather the best possible equipment, and the combat game with
other players.[34] Winners of a match are greeted with
the phrase "winner winner chicken dinner", an idiom that Greene had
used in his prior battle royale games and kept in Battlegrounds,
which itself had origins as early as the Great Depression era.[35]
Greene also introduced microtransactions that allow players to use
real-world funds to purchase loot crates that provide randomly-selected
cosmetic items, also known as "skins", which they can trade with
other players; while Greene recognizes the issue with skin gambling, he believes that Valve has put
safeguards in place to support a "skin economy" that will provide
further revenue for them without concerns over gambling.[8] However, by November 2017, gray market skin gambling sites began to appear
that used Battlegrounds cosmetics as virtual currency.[36] Following controversy over the use
of loot boxes to offer "pay-to-win" items
in other games in November 2017, the PUBG Corporation affirmed that while they
would continue to add new cosmetic items rewarded by in-game crate purchases,
they would never add anything that affects or alters gameplay.[37] In May 2018, PUBG Corporation
disabled the ability to trade skins on the Steam Marketplace as they found that players
were still abusing the system by selling them for monetary value through
unofficial third-party platforms.[38] While still in early access, Bluehole
offered an early preview of the system by offering time-limited crates that
could be purchased during the first Battlegrounds Invitations
tournament during Gamescom in
August 2017, with the sales from these contributing to the prize pool. Among
loot from these crates were special outfits inspired by the original Battle Royale film.[39] Greene anticipates adding a campaign
mode with co-operative player support, though there would be "no serious
lore" crafted for the narrative, comparing this to similar modes in Watch Dogs.[40]
The game also features custom
gamemodes and modding support.[6][14] He considered modding support an
essential part of the full release as, just as he had his start with mods, he
wants to enable others to create variations on his game so that he could
"find the next PlayerUnknown".[41] This was aided by a quiet release of
custom server support to a number of influential streamers which subsequently
made it into public release.[23] In one case, "Zombie Mode",
all but four players pretend to be zombies, who may sometimes distinguish themselves by
removing all clothing and are limited only to collecting melee weapons and
consumable items, and must rush to attack the other four players, who are able
to collect all gear and attempt to outrun and defeat the zombies.[42] Inspired by this mode, Greene
announced plans to introduce an official zombie-based gameplay mode based on
this into Battlegrounds.[43] Whereas most of the rest of the team
continued to develop the core gameplay and maps, Greene is taking on the zombie
mode as a near solo project, only using the assistance of the lead animator to
help with the zombie animations.[22] Greene sees Battlegrounds as
a platform, and would like to see more custom game types and mods developed by
players for it.[12] Greene identified that some mods that
he also previously worked on from ARMA 3 may become part of
the Battlegrounds platform.[12] Greene also wants to incorporate the
game with streaming services like Twitch that would enable replays or other
features amenable to treating Battlegrounds as an esport, calling this an "ultimate end goal"
for his development, but he wanted to let the nature of how it would play out
naturally with players.[6][14][13]
Release
Personal
computers
Bluehole used closed alpha and
beta periods with about 80,000 players to gauge initial
reaction to the gameplay and adjust balance prior to a wider release.[14][44] Just
prior to the early access phase on Steam, Bluehole opened a
few servers and invited some popular live streamers of
similar games to try it out as to start gaining interest.[45] Early
access for the Windows version launched on March 23, 2017.[46] This
period was planned to last approximately six months, originally aiming for a
September 2017 release.[46][47] In
July 2017, Greene announced that they would need to extend the early access period
by a few months, continuing to release updates on a regular basis, with plans
to still release by the end of 2017, as committing to this original period
"could hinder us from delivering a fully featured game and/or lead to
disappointment within the community if the launch deadline is not met".[48] Initially,
Bluehole had expected that they would just gain enough players through early
access to smooth out the gameplay, and only when the game was completed, they
would have started more marketing for the title. The sudden interest in the
game from early access exceeded their expectations, and put emphasis on the
stability of the game and its underlying networking alongside gameplay
improvements.[44] Through
August 2017, these updates generally included a major weekly patch alongside
major monthly updates that provided key performance improvements.[49] However,
from August onward Bluehole backed off the rate of such patches, as the high
frequency has led to some quality control issues, and the developers rather
make sure each patch content is well-vetted by the community before providing
new updates; this did not change their plans for a 2017 release, where it fully
released out of early access on December 20.[50][51]
In part of the game's success in
early access, Tencent Games, the largest publisher of video
games in China, approached Bluehole that same month with an offer to
publish Battlegrounds in China and purchase equity in the
company.[52] However,
the China Audio-Video and Digital Publishing Association issued a statement in
October 2017 that discouraged battle royale-style games, stating that they are
too violent and deviate from Chinese values of socialism, deeming it harmful to
young consumers.[53][54] The
following month however, PUBG had reached a formal agreement with the Chinese
government to allow the release of the game in the country, with Tencent as the
publishing partner.[55] However,
some changes were made to make sure it aligned with socialist values and
traditional Chinese morals.[56] In
South Korea, the game is marketed and distributed by Kakao Games.[57]
Despite the lack of a Chinese
publisher prior to the Tencent deal, players in China had found ways to acquire
and play the game through Steam via proxies and other networking tricks.[58] To
address it, PUBG Corporation planned to add maximum client ping limits for servers which can
reduce the issues with latency problems and prevent some of the cheating that
has occurred. This would not prevent cross-region matchmaking but may make it
difficult for some players to play outside their region if they have a poor
Internet infrastructure.[59] Tencent
has also helped by identifying and reporting around 30 software programs to
Chinese police that can be used to cheat in Battlegrounds, leading
to over a hundred arrests by the beginning of 2018.[60] Separately,
this technical issue, in addition to the larger number of Chinese players, has
created complaints in the player community. Some Western players fear that many
Chinese players are able to cheat in the game by exploiting some of the network
latency issues, something that PUBG Corporation continued to address as the
game shifted out of early access. However, a small number of players called for
server segregation by region and had used racial insults at Chinese players
they encountered in game. Greene was disappointed with this "xenophobic
attitude", calling it "disgraceful", and asked the player
community to respect the Chinese players more as their numbers were a key part
of the game's success.[58] Greene
also identified that players can easily get around such region locks
using virtual private networks, making this
approach ineffective.[61] PUBG
Corporation eventually added region-based matchmaking by October 2018, though
players still reported issues with connectivity and slow matchmaking.[62]
PUBG Lite is a free version of Battlegrounds that
is meant to be better playable on low-end computers by having significant
reductions in graphic details and other features, but is otherwise feature
complete with the full game. The version is meant to be played in regions where
the game's minimum specifications may be difficult for average players to
achieve, with a beta launch first releasing in Thailand in January 2019, and in
Europe that October.[63][64]
Consoles
Greene was part of Microsoft's
press conference during E3 2017 to announce that Battlegrounds would
be coming to Xbox One as a timed console exclusive sometime by the end
of 2017, using the Xbox Game
Preview early access approach to test it.[65][66][44]
Initially, Greene said that
Microsoft was not directly involved in the porting but only providing
assistance to make sure the port is good, and that most of the porting
responsibilities are being done by Anticto, a Spanish developer.[41] However,
at Gamescom that
year, Bluehole affirmed that Microsoft
Studios would be publishing the Xbox One version of the title,
helping to make a planned 2017 release for this version.[67] Greene
said that Microsoft's support has helped in several ways, not only for the Xbox
One version but improving the performance and security of the Windows version.
Further, by being part of the group of studios under the Microsoft banner, they
have been able to talk and incorporate technology from other developers, such
as improved water rendering techniques they obtained from Rare that
they had developed for Sea of Thieves.[68] Microsoft
considered Battlegrounds to be an important project to
demonstrate their company's ability to be more than just a publisher, according
to Microsoft's Nico Bihary who lead the project. Bihary said they have
given Battlegrounds a "white glove" treatment, and
for the Xbox One port have provided services from their advanced technology
group and time and support from The Coalition, another of Microsoft
Studios' subsidiaries.[69] Kim
also stated that the team was interested in cross-platform play between the Windows
and console versions, but did not anticipate this as a release feature, as they
need to determine how to mitigate the advantage keyboard and mouse-using
players would have over those using controllers.[44]
Titled "Game Preview
Edition", the early access version for the Xbox One was released on
December 12, 2017 in both digital and physical formats.[70] To
promote it, Microsoft performed real-life supply crate drops in Australia in
the week prior, with the crates containing Xbox hardware, Battlegrounds merchandise,
and other goods, using passcodes published alongside the drop locations on
social media.[71] The
Xbox version also includes Xbox-specific in-game cosmetic items, some which
could be purchased directly rather than through in-game crates.[72] The
official release out of the Game Preview program occurred on September 4, 2018.[73][74]
With the announcement of the Xbox
release, PUBG Corporation stated that there were plans to port to additional
platforms, such as the PlayStation 4.[75][76][77] In
an interview shortly after Gamescom, Greene said that their deal with Microsoft
did not exclude a PlayStation 4 port, but that their focus at the time was only
on the Windows and Xbox One version, given the small size of their team.[68][52] When
asked about it in January 2018, Kim stated that the team released the game
first on the Steam and Xbox Game Preview early access programs as they both
easily allowed in-development games to be released and updated over time, which
contrasted with Sony's lack of their own early access program, as well as their
strict quality control for even completed games.[78] The
PlayStation port was officially announced in November, and was released on December
7, 2018. PUBG Corporation studio head Brian Corrigan said that while they had
had a small team working on the PlayStation 4 port for some time, it was only
until the Xbox One port was mostly completed that they began fully working on
the PlayStation port.[79] The
PlayStation 4 version of the game includes platform-exclusive customization
items, specifically the outfit of Nathan Drake from the Uncharted series,
and Ellie's backpack from The Last of Us.[80] A
short live-action film to promote the PlayStation 4 release was directed
by Jordan Vogt-Roberts and starred Jason Mitchell.[81]
Cross-platform play support between the
Xbox and PlayStation versions of Battlegrounds was added in
October 2019 following a testing period during the prior month.[82][83]
PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds
– Pioneer Edition was released on
the streaming service Stadia on April 28, 2020. The game was
free for Stadia's paid subscribers on launch.[84]
Esports
To celebrate the game surpassing
two million copies sold, Bluehole announced a 2017 Charity Invitational event,
inviting 128 players to compete over their official Twitch channel
to raise money for the Gamers Outreach Foundation, with Bluehole
matching all donations up to US$100,000.[99] The
competition ran in early May 2017, and raised at
least US$120,000 from viewers along with
Bluehole's US$100,000 match, and served as a prototype for
future esports events
for the game.[100] During
the August 2017 Gamescom event, Bluehole and ESL organized
the first Battlegrounds invitational tournament, with a
$350,000 prize pool. Separate events were held for solo players, two-player
teams, two-player teams fixed to first-person perspective, and four-player
squads. Each event featured three matches, with the player or team scoring the
highest across all three named winners.[39][101][102]
Greene said that while he had
envisioned the battle royale format to be a spectator sport since his ARMA
II mod, their approach to making Battlegrounds an
esport would be a matter of taking "baby steps". Greene said that
they would not actively pursue esports until after the game was fully released
and that all major bugs were eliminated. The Gamescom 2017
event demonstrated the issues surrounding the logistics of running a
large Battlegrounds tournament with a large number of players
involved, and they had worked alongside ESL to explore how to do this
effectively in the future. Further, Greene stated there was also the need to
establish a format for presenting a Battlegrounds match to
make it interesting to spectators, which he thought would take some time to
develop given the nature of the emergent gameplay, comparing it to established
first-person shooters and multiplayer online battle arena esport games.[103] A
20-team, 80-player tournament with a US$200,000 prize pool was organized
by Intel in
Oakland in November 2017.[104][105]
Reception
Battlegrounds received "generally favorable reviews" on
all platforms, with the exception of the PlayStation 4 version which received
"mixed or average reviews", according to review aggregator website Metacritic.[106] During both its early access phase
and after, the game also surpassed numerous player-count records. Bluehole
released statistics for the first four months of release that showed that over
ten million rounds of Battlegrounds had been played,
effectively equal to more than 25,000 man-years of time.[116] Data by SteamSpy showed that Battlegrounds had
surpassed long-standing popular titles in concurrent player count on
Steam, such as Fallout 4 and Grand Theft Auto V,
eventually overtaking Dota 2, the
most played game on the platform for years, in August 2017.[117][118] The following month, the game had
its peak concurrent player count reach over 1.3 million, surpassing Dota
2's all-time record of 1.29 set in March
2016.[119][120][121] The game then reached a concurrent
player count of two million in October 2017,[122] and three million by the end of the
year.[123] The game has also been shown popular
in South Korean PC bangs;
analysis firm Gametrics reported that Battlegrounds had
surpassed Overwatch and
became the second-most played game in the country by August 2017, only behind League of Legends,[124] it subsequently surpassed League
of Legends by October 2017.[125] Battlegrounds' popularity in China led to a large increase in users
of Steam from there, with more than half of Steam clients having Chinese as
their default language in late 2017.[58]
Several journalists commented on
the game's rapid growth towards a large player base for a game that was still
in early access. Greene had confidence that the game could reach over a million
players within a month, but some of his development team were only anticipating
around 200,000 to 300,000 within the first year, and were surprised by its
performance in its first month.[126] Greene himself believed that the
strong growth was buoyed by non-traditional promotional channels like Twitch
streamers and other content creators, which they have since worked to introduce
new gameplay elements ahead of public release.[68] IGN's Rad
believed that the popularity of the game was due to its fast-paced nature
compared to similar type games available at the time, such as H1Z1 and DayZ. She thought that the design balanced the
solitary periods when the player is scavenging or sneaking around with those of
being in combat with others, and the approach is readily accessible to new
players with very little waiting time to get into a new match.[127] Andy Moore for Glixel considered that Battlegrounds' popularity comes from how the game encouraged
players to engage due to the situation they are placed in rather than from the
player's own disposition, comparing it to the Stanford prison experiment,
and thus able to capture the interest of players who may normally eschew these
types of games.[128]
Rock Paper Shotgun's Michael Johnson described Battlegrounds as
"a tactical shooting sandbox, a story generator, and a horror game all in
one", providing some of the "highest highs" in multiplayer
gaming as reason for its popularity.[129] Rob Zacny for Waypoint found
that Battlegrounds offered the same type of entertainment
experience for viewers that many other player-vs-player survival games have, but because of the lack of
persistence, players were more likely to experiment with resources rather than
hoard them, leading to humorous or unexpected situations that are often absent
in survival games and making the title more enjoyable to watch and play,
leading to its popularity.[130] Jeff Grubb of Venture Beat considered Battlegrounds as
a paradigm shift in the first-person shooter market similar to how Call of
Duty 4: Modern Warfare also changed the landscape of
shooters when it was released in 2007, and believed it did this by being an
anti-Call of Duty in terms of pacing and strategy.[131]
Battlegrounds is considered the defining game of the battle royale game genre
due to its popularity, even though other games, including Greene's previous
mods, were already on the market.[132] After its large early access sales
numbers, other games followed with battle royale mechanics, with either
existing games that added a battle royale mode or fully new games.
Notably, Epic Games updated
their in-development title Fortnite, a sandbox-based survival game that
included the ability to construct fortifications, to include a battle royale
mode that retained the fortification aspects. Known as Fortnite Battle Royale,
Epic later released it as a standalone free-to-play game in September 2017.
Shortly after its release, Bluehole expressed concerns about the game,
acknowledging that while they cannot claim ownership of the battle royale
genre, they feared that since they had been working with Epic for technical
support of the Unreal engine, that they may have had a heads-up on planned
features they wanted to bring to Battlegrounds and could
release it first.[133] PUBG Corporation later filed a
lawsuit against Epic Games Korea in January 2018, alleging that Fortnite
Battle Royale was infringing the copyright of Battlegrounds.[134] However, the lawsuit was closed by
PUBG in June 2018 for undisclosed reasons.[135]
Greene had expressed concern on
the large number of games that have simply cloned the Battleground mechanics,
particularly in China where clones of Battlegrounds are
considered a new genre of "chicken-eating game" (based on the
"winner winner chicken dinner" line to a match winner in Battlegrounds).[136][137] Greene said "I want this genre
of games to grow. For that to happen you need new and interesting spins on the
game mode. If it's just copycats down the line, then the genre doesn't grow and
people get bored."[132] Greene claimed no ownership of the
battle royale or last man standing genres, but believed that the clones were
taking some specific mechanics he had developed in Battlegrounds and
prior mods, such as the initial parachuting segment or the red-zone bombing
runs, and would like to see legislation to give developers such as himself
protection against these types of concepts as well as improve creativity as
developers invent new approaches to mimic such innovations.[138] Battlegrounds' explosive growth and how it popularized the battle
royale genre was considered to be one of the top stories in the video game industry during
2017.[139][140][141]
Prior to release of their mobile
versions, PUBG Corporation initiated legal action in the Northern Distinct Court of California against
Chinese game publisher NetEase in
January 2018, claiming that their mobile games Rules of Survival and Knives Out infringe
on Battlegrounds' copyrights. PUBG's
lawsuit asserts that Rules of Survival is "a
copyrightable audio-visual work, individually and/or in combination with other
elements of Battlegrounds", and identified several elements that appear
similar in both games. While some of these elements are common features of a
battle royale game, PUBG asserted that other elements reference specific facets
of Battlegrounds, such as references to chicken for winning a game
or using cookware as weapons or armor, makes Rules of Survival imply
a connection to Battlegrounds. PUBG seeks both monetary damages and
requiring NetEase from further distribution of the games. NetEase, in
responding to PUBG's request to Apple to remove the games, denied that their
games violated Battlegrounds' copyrights.[142][143] By March 2019, the two companies had
reached an undisclosed agreement and were working to get the cases dismissed.[144]
Sales
and downloads
Battlegrounds made US$11 million in the first
three days of its Windows early access release in March 2017.[145] By the second week of April, the
game had sold over one million copies, with a peak player count of 89,000,[146] SuperData Research estimated that
the game's April sales exceeded US$34 million, putting it as one of
the top 10 highest grossing revenue games for the month and exceeding revenue
from Overwatch and Counter-Strike:
Global Offensive.[147] By May 2017, the game had sold over
two million copies, with total gross revenues estimated
at US$60 million.[148][149] Within three months of its early
access release, it had surpassed over five million copies sold,[150] and Bluehole announced it had
exceeded US$100 million in sale revenue.[151] Battlegrounds reached
this four million mark faster than Minecraft, which took over a year to reach
similar sales figures while it was in its paid-beta development period.[152]
By September 2017, Bluehole's
value, as tracked by a firm that tracks private Korean corporations, increased
five-fold from June of that year to a value of US$4.6 billion,
primarily due to Battlegrounds.[52] By December 2017, PUBG Corporation
reported that there were more than 30 million players worldwide between the
Windows and Xbox versions.[153] The research film SuperData
estimated that Battlegrounds drew in more than US$712
million in revenue within 2017.[154] By February 2018, the game had sold
over thirty million on Steam according to Steam Spy.[155] The following month, Gabe Newell stated that the game was the third
highest-grossing game of all time on the platform.[156]
Within three days of going live
on the Xbox Live Preview Program in mid-December 2017, Microsoft announced
that Battlegrounds had sold more than a million copies on the
platform. Alongside this, Microsoft announced that Battlegrounds would
be offered as a free add-on for those buying the Xbox One X console through the end of 2017.[157] A month after release, the Xbox
version had sold more than four million copies and was the fourth bestselling
game in the United States, according to The NPD Group.[158][159] By March 2018, the game had sold
forty million copies across all platforms, which had risen to over fifty
million by June, averaging over 87 million players daily with over 400 million
players in total.[160][161] The mobile version in particular had
over 100 million downloads by August 2018,[162] and exceeded 225 million
by October 2018,[163] a figure higher than the combined
player base for Fortnite at
nearly the same point in time. As of 2018, the bulk of these players were in
Asian countries such as China and India, where PUBG Mobile was
released before Fortnite and could run on lower-powered mobile
hardware.[164][165] China has the game's largest player
base.[163] PUBG was the most
popular online game in India in 2018 (but it was banned by the government of
India in 2020; see below).[166]
PUBG was the top-selling premium game of 2017,[167] having sold 30 million
copies worldwide and grossed about $900 million.[168] By June 2018, it had sold more than
50 million copies worldwide.[161] PUBG was again the
top-selling premium game of 2018, increasing its annual sales revenue
to $1.028 billion.[169] In addition, the free-to-play PUBG
Mobile became the first mobile battle royale game to gross
over $1 billion,[170] reaching over $1.5
billion as of 2019.[171]
PUBG Mobile was the second most-downloaded mobile game of 2018,
with nearly 300 million downloads worldwide. The
game's largest market was China, which accounted for 29% of the game's
downloads, followed by India and the United States each with about 10% (30 million) of its downloads. It was the most-installed
battle royale game of 2018, with about 200 million
more installs than Fortnite, which received 82 million
installs on mobile devices.[172] As of 2019, PUBG Mobile has
reached 555 million players worldwide. As of
early 2020, he mobile game's largest markets were India with 116 million (21%)
downloads, China with 108 million (19%) downloads, and the United States with
42 million (8%) downloads.[173]
In Japan, PUBG was
the most popular PC game during
2017.[174] PUBG Mobile grossed ¥3.58
billion ($32.42 million) in Japan during 2018.[175] In January 2019, the PlayStation 4
version of Battlegrounds sold 7,447 copies within its first
week in Japan, which placed it at number fourteen on the all format sales chart.[176] As of December 2019, the PC and
console versions of the game have sold over 60 million
copies, in addition to PUBG Mobile having crossed 600 million downloads.[177] By July 2020, computer and console
software sales had exceeded 70 million units
sold,[178] in addition to PUBG Mobile accumulating 734 million downloads.[179] PUBG Mobile grossed
over $3.5 billion in revenue by August 2020.[180] PUBG Mobile grossed
over $2.6 billion in 2020, making it the highest-grossing game of
the year and bringing its total revenue to over $4.3
billion as of December 2020.[181]
National
bans
In March 2019, Battlegrounds was
banned in the Indian state of Gujarat after the local government decided the
game was "too addicting and violent" and an unnecessary distraction
during exam season.[233] A
number of students caught playing the game were arrested as a result.[234][235] The
ban was not renewed in some cities in the state after March as exam season had
ended.[233] A
similar ban was enacted in Nepal and Iraq in April 2019, with the cited reasons
being that the game was harmful to children and teenagers.[236][237] The
ban in Nepal was shortly lifted by the country's Supreme Court, stating that
the government could not enforce such a ban that interfered with personal
freedoms without demonstrating why the ban was necessary.[238] In
mid-2019, Jordan and the Indonesian province of Aceh issued similar bans.[239][240]
On July 1, 2020, Battlegrounds was
banned in Pakistan by Pakistan Telecommunication Authority citing
the reasons that the game is addictive, wastage of time and poses serious
negative impact on physical and psychological health of the children after
receiving various complaints from different segments of society and Lahore High
Court's directions to look in the matter. However the ban is
temporary till further orders from the court.[241] The
game continued to remain banned in Pakistan for a month. A meeting was held on
July 30, 2020 between PTA and legal representatives of Proxima Beta who
addressed the queries raised by authority and emphasized on continued
engagement and a comprehensive control mechanism after which the ban was lifted
from Battlegrounds.[242]
Amidst the ongoing 2020 China–India skirmishes, the Indian
government banned PUBG Mobile along with more than 100 other
Chinese apps, most made by Tencent and Netease,
on September 2, 2020, asserting the apps were "stealing and
surreptitiously transmitting user data in an unauthorized manner to servers
which have locations outside India".[243][244] India
was PUBG Mobile's largest market with the
country accounting for 175 million downloads and 24% of global users.[245]
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