PUBG Lite, a free-to-play version of the battle royale that first surfaced in Thailand, is coming to Europe next week. It’ll be the first time that PC players will get to experience Fortnite’s famous forerunner for free, which in a twist of fate may be fantastic news for the Pope.
There’s a full list of all the European countries that are able to enjoy the closed beta here. For anyone in the Vatican who gets an incense-able urge for a chicken dinner, your territory is listed too. Considering the Vatican’s previous delve into game development with such sainted hits as Pope-emon Go (not the official name, just a tragic missed opportunity), we’re certain PopeG is already on its way.
PUBG was at one point king of the hill when it came to battles royale, until its original player numbers were smited by Fortnite, the free-to-play alternative. Though PUBG is still doing well – especially in its ludicrously profitable mobile form – it’s fair to say it hasn’t been quite the sensation that Fortnite has. A robust free-to-play offering would seem an obvious step to take to resurrect PUBG’s player numbers. It’s almost like the devs are Cotta-ning on.
It’ll be a small miracle if PUBG Lite can become as populous as PUBG Mobile, however, with that playerbase having recently reached 400 million downloads and 50 million daily users – a devout following indeed. Perhaps this is another sign that the continued entanglement of free-to-play and battle royale should be taken as gospel.
Lite is ‘lite’ for one main reason: the system requirements are significantly lower. PUBG isn’t exactly famous for its aesthetics so it’ll be interesting to see if these new changes will turn out heavenly, or be hellish on the senses.
Lite is still in closed beta and further info is hard to come by, so fans that don’t want to pay the full price may be waiting in purgatory for a while yet.