PUBG is often considered to be the ‘founding father’ of modern battle royale games, having been released way back in 2017 before the genre gained widespread, mainstream popularity. However, it might be one of the oldest battle royale games on the market, but that doesn’t mean it’s dying. In fact, according to Krafton, the game’s publisher, it’s stronger than ever before.
In a financial report, it was recently revealed that PUBG has secured an ‘all-time high in in-game sales’, seeing immense growth primarily on PC, with sales growing by 68% year-on-year. It’s still a game with intense pulling power, which is a claim that can be backed up by the figures that are readily available online.
PUBG Is Power
From the original PC game to the console-based variants, and from PUBG Mobile to the esports ecosystem surrounding the game, PUBG is powerful – there’s no denying that. It reportedly drove Krafton’s ‘record quarterly sales’ that topped $400 million in Q1 of 2023, a staggering sum by any means (thanks, PCGamer).
In January 2022, PUBG went free-to-play, and it was later reported that, on average, 80,000 new players every day had flocked to the platform since the decision was made to change the operating model entirely. To this day, PUBG still boasts the Steam record for the highest peak concurrent player count of all time, and it’s not a record that’s going to be beaten any time soon.
CSGO has been breaking its own concurrent player count over and over again recently, but it’s nothing compared to PUBG, which once upon a time secured more than 3.2 million concurrent players on Steam alone. It’s consistently one of the most popular games on Steam, securing daily peaks of around 400,000 users.
And that’s before we start talking about console or mobile gamers.
While it’s typically Fortnite or Call of Duty Warzone in the news, some praise has to be handed to PUBG, which is pulling in staggering numbers even this far down the road from its initial release date.
For more Insider Gaming news, check out our coverage of the performance of the Horizon franchise in the last few years.
