PUBG Mobile Loses The Race To $100 Million To Fortnite Because Of China

PUBG Mobile, Tencent’s smartphone version of its massively popular battle royale game, has been a very successful mobile game. It crosses the 100 million downloads milestone on Google Play Store in record time, and also managed to generate a revenue of $100 million in less than 200 days after its release.

However, Tencent is likely not happy with this result, as these numbers pale in comparison to some other big names in the same genre, such as Epic Game’s Fortnite or NetEase’s Knives Out.

According to Adam Spannbauer, an analyst from Sensor Tower, both Fortnite and Knives Out managed to cross the $100 million revenue mark in a shorter amount of time. Fortnite did it almost twice as fast as PUBG, and by 200 days after its launch, it had already raked in $300 million. Another thing worth noting is that this number is income from Apple’s App Store only.

PUBG Mobile is affected by Chinese regulations

So, does that mean PUBG Mobile is less popular than Fortnite or even Knives Out? The answer is up for debate. One thing is certain, though, China is the reason behind PUBG Mobile’s slower revenue. At the time PUBG Mobile came out, China had already frozen all new-game licenses. This means game developers can publish and operate their games in the country, but these games must not contain any options for in-game spending. Considering that China is the home country of Tencent, and PUBG Mobile is massive there, this regulation certainly hurts the company quite a bit.

Spannbauer claims that China has the most PUBG Mobile players out of any country in the world, making up about 33 percent of the 225 million downloads that PUBG Mobile has had on App Store and Google Play Store. In comparison, the game’s next two biggest markets, the US and India, only contribute to 11 and 8 percent of the total numbers of download, respectively. Even then, the US market has already generated a revenue of $24.3 million. So with the Chinese player base being three times as big, we can see how much money this market could have brought had it not been for the regulation from the government.

On a final note, there is currently no information on when China will lift this restriction.