PUBG battlegrounds the PC and console model of the battle royal shooter series is making a lot of money following its switch to free to play in January as revealed by the developer’s latest earnings report published Friday. According to the report on PC, sales were up 61 percent year over to $32.3 million. On console the sales jump was even bigger, increasing 124 percent from the previous quarter and 274 percent year over year though didn’t put a dollar figure behind those increases in average monthly active users from Q4 2021. PUBG battlegrounds was originally a paid title when it launched on steam in early access in 2017 but the outsized financial success of free-to-play battle royal shooters like Fortnite, call of duty and Apex legends proved that the free version can be quite profitable. To give you an idea of just how rewarding EA said this week that Apex legends a game that has surpassed $2 billion in lifetime net bookings. And Epic raised $144 million for Ukraine relief from just two weeks of Fortnite proceeds. So for Krafton switching PUBG battlegrounds to free-to-play was likely a pretty easy decision. And the popularity of PUBG mobile most likely helped Krafton says that the game which has been downloaded more than 1 billion times as of March 2021 earned $307.01 million in revenue in the first quarter of 2022 a figure that was up 5 percent year over year.
PUBG battlegrounds are earning a lot more money after going free-to-play
