Recently, PUBG (Player Unknown Battle Grounds) has introduced a carbon copy of Fortnites top monetizing features. The Battle Pass.
Now, what exactly is Fortnite’s Battle pass?
Fortnite’s Battle Pass is very similar to a premium subscription model where players have access to exclusive skins in the game that are not available for free players.
These exclusive skins can be earned through completing missions or quest that are provided via:
Event Missions
Daily Missions
Completing these missions yield Battle Pass Experience called “Stars” and when accumulated enough the players can level up to the next level unlocking special items.
The season pass usually lasts about 2.5 months and during the duration of this time, players are required to level up to the level cap to unlock all the exclusive items in the game.
(I’m going to skip through the other player level progression that provides experience boost since its not relevant to this post.)
The effectiveness of this monetization model can be displayed in the below chart.
As you can see, Tencent’s PUBG implemented the vaunted Battle pass back in June 2018 and you can obviously see the impact in Grossing when released. PUBG went from a top 175 Grossing game to a top 25 Grossing game. This is a potential $100k day to a a $2 – $4 Million dollar days. Massive.
The funny thing about this initiative is that BlueHole, the developers of PUBG choose not to do any sort of innovation to the new / ROI impactful Battle Pass system and straight out copied Fortnite to even the color tone and feel.
Many would scream ‘LAWSUIT!!!’ but what people need to understand is that these 2 massive success titles that the mainstream media constantly discuss is actually influenced by the same company.
Back in 2013, Tencent spent over $330 Million in acquiring 48.5% of Epic Games studio. Link: here This year, Tencent spent over $500 Million to accumulate over 10% of the shares of the $5 Billion valuated Blue Hole Studios, the developers of PUBG. Link: here