As we announced last month, PUBG has decided to go free-to-play. Considered by many to be the game that popularized Battle Royale, the title was still very popular but struggled to keep up with the competition, ahead of the game. the explosion of the genre on PC and consoles, and in particular via free titles. Suddenly, since January 12, PUBG has also moved to a free to play format, with an option Battlegrounds More, serving as a premium and paid account offering exclusive content, the Ranked mode, and especially offered to those who had previously purchased the game.
Without much surprise, this transition to free has given the game a boost. On PC, the number of players in simultaneous connections has greatly increased. In a few days, that figure nearly doubled on servers, according to data from Steam. Less than 370,000 players at the end of December, the game is now showing peaks of 667,000 since yesterday. It’s very simple, since the announcement of its transformation, the average has only increased, which had hardly happened since the end of 2020.
Even though the title has always been very high in the Steam charts, PUBG is now securing a solid third place in Steam’s most popular list, far ahead of Apex Legends or GTA 5, closely following the behemoths who had a 2021 year of all records, CS: GO and Dota 2.