PUBG records a big increase in Steam after the free-to-play update

Today is PUBG: Battlements completely playable for free — and the effects are already noticeable. Although we can not see any data on performance on consoles, the number of Steam players has risen considerably.

According to Steam Charts, the player number of PUBG quickly exceeded the highest days of the days before the free-to-play update and has climbed to a high of 667,000 players today. This is the highest steam player number from PUBG since May 2020.

The conversion from PUBG to a free-to-play model brings it in line with some of its most important Battle-Royale rivals such as Call of Duty War zone and Apex Legends. All players can now receive a basic PUBG account for free, with which they can access most of the game. Existing players who bought the game previously have been automatically updated to a Battleground Plus account that has access to all content and ranking mode of the game. New players can pay a one-time fee of $12.99 for upgrading to a Battleground Plus account if you want to try to climb the PUBG ranks.

Since PUBG is free on all platforms, the entire player base is probably much higher than what it is currently reaching on the PC.

As the game added additional tutorials to bring new players on board, the hope is that PUBG can hold many players who try the Battle Royale for the first time, now it's free to play.

Although today's update led to a significant increase in player numbers, PUBG will have some time before it reaches its previous top record in the Steam player number of 3.2 million, which was established in January 2018.