PUBG Has Officially Gone Free-To-Play

So, it’s official. PUBG - Battlegrounds has made the transition to free-to-play. You now have absolutely no excuse not to play it, other than trying to maintain some semblance of spare time in your life, that is. 

Well, at the time of writing, you do actually have one other excuse not to be playing - which is that server maintenance is currently underway. PC servers are expected to be back up at about 8am GMT on 12 January, so you have less than 24 hours to preserve a balance in your life before getting sucked in and never coming back out.

Have a little throwback to PUBG's original launch trailer below.

While every single player can play the game for free, there’s also the option to buy a BATTLEGROUNDS Plus account. With a one-off purchase of £9.99, players can receive a bunch of bonuses, including ranked mode, the option to create custom matches, and some exclusive items. 

If you’d already bought the game in the past, fear not, as you’ve not been forgotten. Existing players will automatically receive the PUBG - Special Commemorative Pack, which includes a free BATTLEGROUNDS Plus upgrade, so you won’t have to spend any more on the game to get the full experience. The Special Commemorative Pack also includes some extra rewards, including a costume skin set. The conditions for being eligible for this vary slightly between platforms - PlayStation and Steam users simply need to have purchased the game already, but Xbox and Stadia players need to have finished setting up their in-game nickname before the free-to-play transition took place. Either way, any avid players certainly don’t need to worry. 

The announcement that the game would be going free-to-play was made back on 10 December last year, when the team said: “BATTLEGROUNDS Free-to-play now gives us the opportunity to expand our community even more and bring all the thrills of the game to everyone, while providing new friends, faster matchmaking, and let’s be honest, more targets for our existing player base.”

So, will you be taking the plunge, or staying far, far away? Personally, my backlog is way too big to even consider throwing myself into a new battle royale, but you never know. Maybe just one game.