Just as it looks like the Apex Legends bubble may have burst – at least, on Twitch – it seems the old dog of the battle royale genre is still fit and healthy. PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds made $920 million in revenue during 2018. That’s up on 2017 – the year it blew up – by around $220 million.
The news comes to us via industry analyst Daniel Ahmad on Twitter, who cites a report by Naver Sports (Naver is a South Korean online platform and search engine). $310 million of that revenue is profit, and $790 million of it comes from PC players.
Astonishingly, mobile is a drop in the ocean at only $65 million – Ahmad explains that this is because Tencent has the licence to make and publish the mobile version, whereas Naver Sports is citing a report from PUBG Corp. Considering PUBG mobile has more downloads than Fortnite – across all its platforms – it’s mind-boggling to think how much money the mobile version might have made Tencent.