It seems as though moving to a free-to-play model is really paying dividends in player numbers for some games. In Krafton’s most recent financial report, the company has revealed that PUBG: Battlegrounds is now bringing in around 80,000 new players every day. This is in response to the game’s new free-to-play model, which it adopted in January of this year.
The battle royale shooter game, which recently marked its fifth anniversary, is clearly making great progress for Krafton. This is no mean feat in a market that’s quite heavily saturated with FPS battle royale games, especially for an older contender like PUBG: Battlegrounds. However, the game’s age doesn’t seem to be a big deal when it comes to PUBG’s player counts, with the game’s reported average revenue per user also seeing an increase. In comparison with the last quarter’s results, the figure rose by 20%. The report also noted that a sizeable chunk of the game’s revenue, 94% in fact, is generated via international markets, with the rest coming from within South Korea, where PUBG: Battlegrounds is made.
The report also made a note of the success of PUBG‘s mobile counterpart, PUBG Mobile. The game, which saw its launch take place around four years back, continues to perform well on the mobile games charts, ranking second in terms of sales globally. Krafton has also been hard at work making sure that the gameplay experience in PUBG: Battlegrounds and its other online live-service games is balanced and fair for its players. The report explains how “the game has also adopted stricter anti-cheat programs” in order to “ensure a fairer playing field for all,” which will have also no doubt contributed to player satisfaction as well as the upturn in numbers of players joining the battlefield.
PUBG: Battlegrounds isn’t the only game to have enjoyed larger success since switching to a free-to-play model. Knockout royale game Fall Guys is also having a similarly positive experience in terms of expanding its player base since moving to its “free for all” mode back in June. The game recently topped 50 million players in July, which shows that shifting towards the free-to-play style of gaming definitely has its benefits for companies as well as players.
In other news from Krafton, the publisher recently announced that it’s working on a brand new IP based on the Korean fantasy novel series The Bird That Drinks Tears. The game has also got renowned concept artist Iain McCaig working on it, who has drawn up some amazing artwork on the project’s recently revealed website already. It looks pretty epic from what we’ve seen so far, so we’ll be keeping an eye on any further details coming up about the project.
