PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds (PUBG) is one of the most curious games of the last decade, not because it has amazing mechanics, graphics or playability, but because of how popular it has become despite not being that exceptional at any of these qualities.
The Battle Royale genre itself is fairly young. We saw the first iteration of the genre back in 2015 with the game called H1Z1, where it was a mod of the game called “King of the Hill”. The mod was created by a player named “Playerunknown”, who then went on to create the game we’re discussing today.
King of the hill instantly became the most popular mod of H1Z1, offering a sneak peek into what could be possible with the genre. After releasing it in 2017, PUBG has absolutely conquered the gaming scene. People started playing the game all around the world, and it quickly started getting more and more popular with no end in sight.
The part of the success of the game was the fact that it was really streamable. No matter the skill level or gameplay style of your favorite streamer, gameplay would almost always be entertaining due to the very nature of the game itself. PUBG becoming mainstream paved a way for many other Battle Royale games like Fortnite, which even surpassed it at some point.
All the versions of the game, starting from the PC version and ending with the console ones, was absolutely dominating the charts in terms of popularity. However, what really brought the game to the next level was its mobile version.
Enter the Mobile PUBG
The game was very well received and is surprisingly well-playable on mobile, contrary to what many people believed. Many anticipated that the game might’ve been unplayable due to the need for aiming with touchscreen, and concerns were raised as to how easy it may have been to aim with the mobile. However, the game has pleasantly surprised everyone with how delightful it is being played.
PUBG’s mobile version was released back in May 2017, and it has been even more successful than its regular version. Much more successful, in fact. PUBG mobile has boasted over 200 million active players, out of which a maximum of 30 million play it every day. Needless to say, these numbers are absolutely mind-blowing.
Such high popularity across the board allows for some very interesting manifestations in different forms. With the esports scene being so developed, there are a lot of people who see an exciting opportunity in making bets on their favorite teams and players. This was previously tried out with a lot of games like League of legends, and it has proven to be a massive success, and sportsbooks are more commonly accepting these kinds of bets. According to Elias Korhonen, the PR representative of Spinia Suomi, in Finland, esports is one of the most exciting new avenues that sportsbook and betting companies can explore. The popularity of the games is extremely high not only among the youth, but working-class adults as well, and as the technologies for the gaming develops and goes further, the outreach and quality of the service can only go up.
Issues with the Mobile Version
With all this being said, it may seem like it’s all sunshine and rainbows with PUBG mobile, and that they’re doing everything correctly. However, that absolutely isn’t the case.
There are several key issues that the player base sees with the games, and developers are challenged with finding viable solutions.
Despite the game being so popular among western players, it doesn’t do a decent-enough job at capitalizing on that. The game is owned by Tencent, the biggest software company in China. Due to that, a bulk of the promotions and events that are offered to the players is going towards Chinese servers. This doesn’t mean that they’re offered only to the Chinese players, but objectively speaking, the ratio is hugely favored towards them, to the point where a lot of players claim bias.
Beyond that, the game has been known to have some connectivity issues. The game has, on many different occasions, crashed completely, with millions of players unable to connect. There were also complaints of frequent lags that would, at times, render the game unplayable. However, with the amount of traffic and gameplay that is conducted by tens of millions of players every day, it’s only understandable.
