PUBG Mobile

PUBG Mobile is a free-to-play battle royale video game co-developed by LightSpeed & Quantum Studio and PUBG Studios. It is a mobile game adaptation of PUBG: Battlegrounds. It was initially released for Android and iOS on 19th of March 2018.

It was published by multiple publishers in different regions, including Krafton, Tencent, and VNG Games. By December 2022, PUBG Mobile had accumulated around 1.3 billion downloads while grossing over US$9 billion. It is also the second most-played mobile video game of all time. In 2021, the game spawned an Indian version, Battlegrounds Mobile India, and a separate game taking place in the PUBG Universe, called New State Mobile.

Gameplay
PUBG Mobile features gameplay similar to that of the original PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds. Players parachute down to a remote island and fight to remain as the last player standing, competing alone or in teams of two or four, depending on the game mode selected before the match. Each match lasts about 30 minutes.

The game begins with the participants flying in a plane over one of many possible maps, also selected before the match. As they cross the map, players choose where to parachute down. When the plane finishes its flight, a blue border forms around the perimeter of the island, marking the boundary between the safe zone and the exterior blue zone. The blue zone shrinks every few minutes, and anyone left in the zone will steadily lose health as long as they remain there, potentially to the point of death. The rate of health loss increases when the safe zone shrinks.

When players first reach the island, they have no supplies or weapons. Therefore, they must find guns and ammunition around abandoned houses or loot them from downed players. In general, better weapons and equipment are found in more dangerous parts of the map. In addition to the regular shrinking of the safe zone, temporary red zones may randomly appear. These zones are barraged randomly with bombs for a relatively short time. Touching an exploding bomb will immediately kill or down you. From time to time, a plane flies over the battlefield to release a package with special equipment, potentially gun craft that cannot be found elsewhere on the island. All of these special events, including the normal safe zone shrinking, are announced to the players before they occur to give a fair warning.

Additional features unique to the mobile version of PUBG include log-in bonuses, missions and micro-goals, crew recruiting, map and compass improvements with larger and clear markers near the teammates, and an auto loot system, as well as an increased number of bots.

Development
PUBG Mobile is the mobile adaption of the popular battle royale game, PUBG: Battlegrounds, developed by PUBG Studios and LightSpeed & Quantum Studio, published by Tencent Games worldwide, while Krafton and VNG Games in India, Korea and Vietnam respectively. The game was released in March 2018 and has since become one of the most popular mobile games in the world.

The development of PUBG Mobile took just 4 months to be completed, as multiple teams from around the world contributed to the project. The project began with the original PC and console version of the game, which was developed by Brendan Greene (known as PlayerUnknown) and released in 2017. Following the success of that particular game, Tencent Games began their development project with PUBG Studios for the mobile version. In doing so, they had to create an evolution of the Unreal Engine 4, which was optimized to suit the mobile platform, with a focus on smoother performance and enhanced graphics.

An abridged version of the game for lower-end Android devices, PUBG Mobile Lite, was first released in Thailand on 24 January 2019 before releasing in Asian, Latin American, and African countries.

Release
Following an international deal for the Windows version, Tencent Games and PUBG Corporation announced plans to release two mobile versions of the game in China. The first, PUBG: Exhilarating Battlefield, an abridged version of the original game, was developed by LightSpeed & Quantum Studio, an internal division of Tencent Games. The second, PUBG: Army Attack, included more arcade-style elements, including action taking place on warships, and was developed by Tencent's TiMi Studio Group. Both versions were free-to-play, and were released for Android and iOS devices on 9 February 2018. The games had a combined total of 75 million pre-registrations, and ranked first and second on the Chinese iOS download charts at launch. Following a soft launch in Canada, an English version of Exhilarating Battlefield, localized as PUBG Mobile, was released worldwide on 19 March 2018. PUBG Mobile KR, a Korean and Japanese oriented version, and PUBG Mobile VN, a Vietnamese oriented version, were released in June 2018 and January 2019 respectively.

In China, PUBG Mobile had been awaiting approval by the government for an authorized release, during which the game could only be offered as a public test. However, Tencent's planned release was suspended due to the government approval freeze across most of 2018. By May 2019, Tencent announced it would no longer seek to publish PUBG Mobile in China, but instead would re-release the game under the title Game for Peace; this version of the game changed elements of the original game to meet China's content restrictions, such as eliminating blood and gore. Following its release, a Taiwanese version of the game, PUBG Mobile TW was released.

A version meant for lower-end mobile devices, PUBG Mobile Lite, was released on 25 July 2019. This has support for high FPS gameplay on multiple Android devices and features a smaller map made for 60 players. The Chinese version of the app was again renamed to Peacekeeper Elite in 2020.

On October 31, 2020, the Tencent-developed version of PUBG Mobile announced that it would be ceasing operations in India. On November 13, 2020, PUBG Corporation, a subsidiary of Krafton responsible for operating PUBG Mobile, officially announced that the Indian version of PUBG Mobile would be released soon. On May 6, 2021, PUBG Studios officially announced that the Indian version of PUBG Mobile would be renamed to Battlegrounds Mobile India (BGMI) and would be released soon. On May 14, 2021, PUBG Studios officially announced that pre-registrations for BGMI would be available through Google Play starting May 18, 2021.

Bans
On 2 September 2020, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology banned PUBG Mobile in India amid the 2020 China-India skirmish. Following this, Tencent Games terminated all services for users in India on 30 October 2020.

On 6 May 2021, Krafton announced the relaunch of the game in India, following the ban imposed by the Government of India. Krafton published the game in the country as Battlegrounds Mobile India (BGMI), which can only be accessed by users in the country. In 2022, BGMI was removed from the Play Store and the Apple App Store as per orders from the Indian Government due to an alleged data leak to Chinese servers, however the game could still be played and installed using an .apk file. On 19 May 2023, Krafton publicly announced BGMI was being relaunched for a trial period after a 10-month long dispute. The game was finally re-released on May 27 for Android users and May 29 for iOS users. However, on both the platforms, it was playable only after May 29.

Violence credited to game
On 28 January 2022, a 14-year-old from Pakistan allegedly shot and killed his entire family. The Punjab police said this was "under the influence" of PUBG.

In 2018, a teenager from Delhi, India allegedly killed his family because he was addicted to PUBG and his parents prevented him from playing the game.

Esports
The game supports several e-sport leagues and tournaments. Each major region has a PUBG Mobile Club Open (PMCO) and players compete in their respective regions until later tournaments. Only 32 teams can qualify out of the many teams that signed up. This phase is known as the PMCO group stage, where the 32 teams are divided into four groups of eight. PMCO in India was held in 2019 for the first time, and the winner of the tournament was Naman Mathur and his team. Once the group stages have elapsed, the finals are hosted where the top 16 teams play. From here, the teams compete to make it to a higher level of competition known as the PUBG Mobile Pro League (PMPL). Later, eSports grew a lot in various countries including India, China, Indonesia, and many more, giving opportunities to many potential players.

Reception
PUBG Mobile received "generally favourable" reviews according to the review aggregator Metacritic.

Downloads
PUBG Mobile was the second most-downloaded mobile game of 2018, with nearly 300million downloads worldwide. The game's largest market was China, which accounted for 29% of the game's downloads, followed by India and the United States, each with about 10% (30million) of its downloads. It was the most-installed battle royale game of 2018, with about 200million more installs than Fortnite. In March 2021, PUBG Mobile had accumulated more than a billion downloads outside of China. Including Peacekeeper Elite, the Chinese version of the game, and Battlegrounds Mobile India, the game had a total player count of around 1.3 billion as of December 2022.

Revenue
PUBG Mobile grossed ¥3.58 billion (US$million) in Japan in 2018. PUBG Mobile grossed over US$3.5 billion in revenue by August 2020. PUBG Mobile grossed over US$2.6 billion in 2020, making it the highest-grossing game of the year and bringing its total revenue to over US$4.3 billion. That figure had increased to over $9 billion as of December 2022.