PlayerUnkown's Battleground is a popular game, and it has quite the competition with the rise of new battle royale games. However, that hasn't stopped players from playing PUBG or the developer from continuing to support the game over the years.
The continued player support for PUBG shows as a recent new report revealed that the game's mobile version has grossed $5.1 billion. The report received its data from Sensor Tower, which analyzed the information and shared the total amount of money that the game made from 2020. According to the report, more than half of the revenue came from player spending in both PUBG Mobile and its Chinese version.
It's no secret that players spend a lot of money on mobile games, and this proved to be advantageous for mobile games like PUBG Mobile during the COVID-19 pandemic. Based on the data, PUBG Mobile was generating approximately $7.4 million per day from player spending alone, which added up to $2.7 billion in 2020. During the first nine months of 2020, the mobile game accumulated $704 million per quarter, with $555 million in Q4.
According to the report, player spending in PUBG's mobile version had reached $709 million in the first quarter of 2021. January saw an accumulation of $259 million just on player spending alone, which proved to be the game's third-biggest month of earnings in the game's history. Reportedly, China was the game's biggest market and proved to be instrumental in its success when the Chinese version, Games For Peace, launched.
Games For Peace earned $2.8 billion, which is 55.4% of the game's lifetime revenue on just iOS devices. Based on the data, PUBG Mobile purchases on the App Store accumulated 81.6% of total revenue, and Google Play accounted for 18.4% of player spending. This is on top of the news of PUBG Mobile's download milestone, with the game hitting a record of over a billion downloads worldwide.
However, the data from Sensor Tower didn't include sales of the game from third-party Android stores. On top of that, it revealed that the US is the second biggest market for PUBG Mobile, accounting for 12.7% of the game's total revenue, with Japan ranked as the third biggest market for the game with 4.8% of revenue.
According to Sensor Tower, part of the reason for PUBG Mobile's success was because the game is mainly built for the mobile gaming audience. From PUBG Mobile's in-game events to the new seasons, licensing deals, and the release of new content on a scale comparable to Fortnite and Genshin Impact, all of this helped maintain player engagement and player spending for the game.
PUBG Mobile is available now on Android and iOS devices.
Source: GamesIndustry.biz