PUBG might not be the talking point that it was at launch, but six years on the daddy of battle royales is still going strong. In a preliminary earnings announcement, publisher Krafton boasted about its “all-time high in in-game sales”, which on PC has grown by 68% year on year. This has also been the main driver for Krafton’s “record quarterly sales” of $407.8 million.
This has led to a net profit of $202.2 million, with Krafton’s mobile division also enjoying a period of growth thanks to PUBG Mobile’s sandbox mode and new releases. Aside from acknowledging that it published Callisto Protocol, the sci-fi horror romp was left out of the celebratory announcement. This is unsurprising given that it failed to meet publisher’s absurdly high sales expectations. Krafton was hoping for 5 million sales in the first year, but soon after launch slashed that number down to 2 million.
While PUBG continues to grow when it comes to sales, player numbers have not seen a similar rise. The battle royale is still looking very healthy, of course, with consistent concurrents of between 4-500,000 players. After this many years, and with so many competitors trying to get their own slice of the battle royale pie, that’s nothing to be sniffed at.
It’s just a shame that a fair chunk of this profit will inevitably be poured into Krafton’s upcoming NFT-driven metaverse, which the publisher and partner Naver Z have already invested $36.8 million USD into.
