PUBG and the Goose That Laid the Golden Eggs
PUBG‘s waning player count isn’t all Fortnite’s fault
January of this year saw PUBG Corp’s eponymous battle royale shooter achieve its highest player count ever, hitting over 3.2 million concurrent players — more players in a single game at the same time than any game ever on Steam. Six months later, PUBG has lost nearly 60% of its player base, now sitting at around 1.2 million concurrent players.
So, what happened?
Sure, we can blame the unfathomable success of Fortnite for peeling off some of those numbers, but the mass exodus of established, financially invested players in such a short amount of time tells us less about how PUBG Corp failed to hold onto their players, and more about how they drove them away. This was the game that couldn’t stop, amassing over 50 million purchases on Steam alone, and continued to grow in popularity throughout 2017. This was the goose that laid the golden eggs — until they killed it.
When PUBG launched in early access in March of 2017, it was a scrappy and ambitious title with an awesome premise: 100 players literally dumped onto an island with nothing but a parachute are forced to scrounge for gear and weapons in order to survive long enough to be the last man standing. It wasn’t the first entry in what became the battle royale genre, but it might as well have been. Despite the early product’s numerous flaws, it excelled on its core concept alone. It was rough around the edges, but regular content updates helped to sand off the burrs and patch its holes. Players were willing to put up with the occasional (or sometimes more than occasional) bug, because the developers really got right the most important elements of the game, and they had faith in the team to set things right in due time.
Unfortunately, the developers slowly whittled away at any goodwill they had, as their improvements came less frequently, and focus seemed to shift towards microtransactions and console ports. The Xbox One port of the game was being announced as cheaters were still clipping through the environment, using aim-bots to take out full squads in a matter of seconds, and generally griefing other players without much done about it. The team’s energy — whether in reality or in perception — was being spent on new ways to make money than on fixing the game that was at the time still in early access.
The Xbox One version of PUBG launched in December of last year, coinciding with the official “launch” of PUBG on PC. The declaration that the game was out of early access was laughable even to the game’s biggest fans. Both Xbox and PC players were subjected to a far from complete package, with bugs that had persisted for months. These were issues that could be forgiven in the first month or two of an early access beta, but not 8 months later, and certainly not in a finished product. The insult was only further compounded by loot crates bought with hard-to-acquire in-game currency that could only be unlocked with keys bought with hard-to-acquire real-world currency. A few months later, Event Passes were added to compete with Fortnite’s Battle Pass. The two are conceptually the same, except PUBG’s Event Pass offers half as much content to its holders, and lasts just four weeks compared to Fortnite’s 8-week cycle, for the same price.
It is a good time to remember that PUBG, in spite of all its free-to-play monetization strategies, is a game with an up-front price tag. Over 50 million players purchased PUBG, only to be hit with $3 keys to unlock crates they earned, and another $10 a month to unlock more content they deserve. All while wall-hacking, aim-botting, and unmitigated performance issues run rampant in the game. It is small wonder that a competitor like Fortnite can offer a free experience with more generous microtransactions and more responsive quality assurance team can come along and drink PUBG’s milkshake.
For whatever it’s worth, I still like PUBG quite a bit — more than Fortnite, in many ways. And so do a over a million people right this minute. It’s still pulling very impressive numbers on a daily basis, and remains the most-played game on Steam at any given time of day (though it pales in comparison to Fortnite’s staggering 4 million concurrent players) because it offers an unparalleled experience when it’s firing on all cylinders. There’s still a lot of incredible moments that can’t be replicated by its competitors, and players are still looking for squads to play PUBG competitively for that reason. PUBG Corp would be wise to recognize why those players are there, and why the millions of others felt the need to sate their appetite elsewhere.
The developers behind PUBG had something special on their hands, and it rewarded them well, with golden egg after golden egg. But then they let greed get the better of them — hastily slicing the proverbial goose open for the lump of gold in its belly — and they killed it. Fortunately videogames aren’t one of Aesop’s fables, and it’s not too late to stitch this goose back up. They’re set to make a big announcement following their first annual PUBG Global Invitational next month. Let’s hope it’s an apology, and a better strategy.
