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 (opens in new tab). 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 (opens in new tab), which the publisher and partner Naver Z have already invested $36.8 million USD into.
