PUBG goes on sale on Steam, free to play this weekend

If you’ve never dove into the fire fights of PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds, the best time to do so is this weekend. 

PUBG kicked off a free-to-play weekend on the Steam store yesterday, giving players a chance to try out the game until Monday, June 8 at 12pm CT. The game is also on sale for 50-percent off over the same time period, making it only $15 to buy if you enjoy it. Any progress you make during the free weekend will carry over to the full game if you purchase it, too.

Players will have access to everything the game offers except for the in-game store. This means players won’t be held back from experiencing the new ranked mode and can team up with existing owners of the game. 

PUBG recently saw a big balance patch that added a ranked mode to the game. This update also brought bots into the PC version of the game, a move to help new players hone their skills and close the skill gap between them and veterans faster.

The battle royale genre’s popularity is largely attributed to the success of PUBG in 2017. The player base skyrocketed at the tail end of the year and reached a peak player count of over 3.2 million in January 2018, despite a number of technical issues. PUBG became the influence of Epic Games to later develop and release Fortnite’s battle royale mode.

Since then, the game’s player base has dropped significantly but it remains stable with consistent numbers. SteamCharts shows a peak player count of just over 550,000 and an average of over 237,000 in the last 30 days.