On 23rd March 2017, BlueHole and PUBG Corp. launched PUBG. Let’s have a comprehensive look at the title.

PUBG beats all records

PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds was released in early Steam access at the end of March 2017. Just five months later, the “royal battle” became the most popular game of the genre. In August, it outperformed Dota 2 in terms of the concurrent number of active users, and in September set a new record for peak users. The numbers grew every month, and already in January 2018, PUBG registered more than three million concurrent players.

At the same time, not everyone was happy with the game: for more than half a year in early access, the developers did not eliminate the problems with optimization, connection to servers and matchmaking. In October 2017, PUBG received almost 30 thousand negative reviews on Steam, and on the day of the full release, on December 21, another 25 thousand. Players didn’t demand new content, which was the Miramar sand map, but quality improvements in the gameplay. Although every month PUBG Corp. reported that they are working on bug fixes. However, was clearly not enough to bring the game back to normal.

Esports or nothing

2018 began with the IEM XII Katowice PUBG Invitational – the third tournament from ESL in the discipline. In the championship, only $ 50 thousand dollars were on the line. However, it was enough to lay down the foundation of the competitive landscape. In the following months, the game was picked up by StarLadder, PGL, and DreamHack.

Despite the fact that the PUBG championships gathered a really large audience only in Asia, the developers decided to take on eSports in person. In June, PUBG Corp. held the Global Invitational – the real The International in the world of the “royal battle”.

As a result, PUBG Corp. became a winner in the eSports field. However, it lost the fight for supremacy in the battle royale genre to Fortnite. Bugs and lags affected the performances of the players competing in the tournaments. So the studio decided to seriously take up the optimization or at least tried to do it.

#FIXPUBG

In the summer of 2018 PUBG Corp. introduced the awesome program #FIXPUBG. The developers have promised that now they will throw all their strength on solving gameplay problems, and will not focus on content. The studio published a “roadmap” and began reporting the fixes on a monthly basis. But, as always, in practice, fixing PUBG was not so easy.

Why the company started repairing the game a year and a half after the release is a mystery. On the second birthday of PUBG, the fans did not receive a long-awaited gift; the game was not saved from bugs.

Current position and outlook

It is safe to say that PUBG will not win the “royal battle” fight with Fortnite and Apex Legends. Now developers are trying to expand the audience with the help of PUBG LITE and PUBG Mobile – both projects are primarily designed for the Asian market, where this brand is still very popular.

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