PUBG going free-to-play claims leaker

PUBG could be going free-to-play, it's been claimed by a well-known leaker.

Just below, you can see a tweet published over the last weekend by a fairly renowned leaker in the PUBG space. This leaker, called PlayerIGN (no affiliation with the outlet), claims that Playerunknown's Battlegrounds could be going free-to-play, if the developers see a strong enough response from the community over the coming free-to-play event that's taking place next month.

Leak:PUBG wants to go free-to-play. They’re going to track player responses in a F2P week that’s happening next month.Keep in mind, PUBG originally wanted to go F2P in 2019; but didn’t get the player response they wanted att from 2019’s F2P test.July 24, 2021

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The leaker notes that PUBG's developers actually wanted to go free-to-play all the way back in 2019, a few years after the game originally released in early access. However, they didn't receive the feedback from players that would justify the decision to switch to a free-to-play model.

Two years later in 2021, it seems like PUBG Corp is having another go of it. Right now, the free-to-play period for PUBG hasn't actually been announced by the developers, so we don't know for sure that it is taking place next month in August. Here's hoping the new claim is accurate though, because it offers a new lease of life to a great battle royale game.

It's interesting to note that a free-to-play version of PUBG did actually exist, but it was shut down earlier this year by PUBG Corp. The game was called PUBG Lite, and was a significantly easier-to-run version of the base game, which let an entirely new audience with weaker rigs get into the game. The COVID-19 pandemic appeared to factor into PUBG Lite's ultimate closure, when the game was terminated earlier this year in May.

Just earlier this month, PUBG received a brand new map called Taego. Arriving on PC on July 7 and just over a week later for console players on July 15, Taego signalled a return to a bigger map size, which PUBG players have been messing around on since the game first launched. Taego is pretty colossal, taking up eight square kilometres in total size, and it's the first map of its size in well over three years for the battle royale shooter.

Elsewhere, rumors have another PUBG-related game launching at some point later this year for both PC and consoles.