On the 12th of this month, PUBG, which has been operating for more than four years, officially turned into a free-to-play game. This measure became KRAFTON's last resort to save the battle royale game, and the fact proved that the "anti-ancestral decision" of switching a buyout game to a free-to-play game was indeed unique.
Just two days after the free opening, the number of PUBG players online on Steam soared to 600,000. Although this is far from the million-player data at its peak, IF this momentum can be maintained, PUBG can still maintain long-term operations and updates.
After half a month, the recent situation of PUBG has become more valuable, and whether the surge in the number of players is a return to the light or the return of the king will also be determined.
At present, PUBG has basically stabilized the top five positions on Steam's online player list, and even in weekday mornings, the number of players can be guaranteed to 100,000+, and this data will double several times at night. Today's peak online player base is 500,000 (players logged in in the early hours of the morning are also counted). It turns out that after PUBG opened for free, it did attract a large number of new players into the pit and survived.
According to foreign media reports, the number of players in PUBG increased by 486% overall after switching to free-to-play games, and the number of players in Southeast Asia and South America increased by 537%. Such an increase rate is unprecedented, and even when PUBG first went online in 2017, it did not achieve the feat of doubling the number of players in half a month.
Although many people were not optimistic that KRAFTON would regain the recognition of players for free, it turned out that this wave of operations really brought PUBG back to life. In celebration of PUBG's strong performance after free, Krafton announced that between January 27 and January 30, players can unlock free special game rewards for only one hour after entering the game.
At the moment, everything is moving in a good direction, and PUBG's ranking players are clearly feeling that the annoying plug-in problem has been alleviated. However, in contrast, the official report of plug-in ban statistics has also increased from 20,000+ before the game is free to 59,000 after free. While the number of PUBG gamers has increased by 4 times, the number of people who open and hang has also increased by 3 times.
Of course, how the game environment is, each player has their own evaluation and perception, and it is not excluded that there is a situation of "playing but hanging". The playing environment between ordinary players and ranked players is not equal. In reality, players still need to experience it themselves. If KRAFTON wants to maintain its current pomp and circumstances, it needs to make more efforts in the future.
So do you think the second spring of PUBG can continue forever?