- PUBG Mobile has around 23-30 million monthly active users and 13 million daily active users.
- PUBG is free to all the players and encourages fair gameplay. Although, the primary source of revenue is through in-app purchases, where the players can spend real money to buy skins for weapons and virtual clothes.
One of the most popular games in India is PUBG Mobile is amassing a huge number of players from across the world. Despite the success and popularity in India, which has around one-fourth of its total mobile user base, the battle royale title is not making enough money. This is a rising concern.
The free-to-play online multiplayer has grown at the real quick pace in and has around 23-30 million monthly active users and 13 million daily active users. They reached this milestone in just one year. But here the numbers don’t translate into revenue and in the case of PUBG Mobile, less than 1 percent of its Monthly Active Users are willing to spend money on the game.
Indian users usually don’t spend much on in-app purchases but PUBG Mobile is trying to change the trend. PUBG is making an average of $7-8 million each month since May this year, according to a report. This converts to roughly Rs. 50 crore a month but if you take MAU’s in the consideration this spending is not nearly enough.
“To have 23 million MAUs and have just 0.1-1% paying users is not sustainable. A healthy ratio should be about 6-7% paying users. In mature markets that ratio goes up to 10-15% paying users,” Manish Kheterpal, Managing Partner at WaterBridge Ventures, a board member of online poker platform 9stacks, told the publication.
Clearly, $7-8 million revenue per month is not enough for a game of big stature of PUBG Mobile. As the report says, Tencent Games has to pay Google 30 percent as the cut and then they pay royalties to PUBG Corporation, the title developer of the title. At last, there are operational costs which include server costs, infrastructure costs and managing the workforce involved in the back end. In the end, Tencent is left with less than $100,000 (which is roughly Rs. 70 lakh). Since Tencent can afford it, the game is still running.
There are always ups and downs in any business. For now, PUBG needs to focus on converting more daily active users in spenders.
