PUBG Mobile Banned Over 2 Million Players in One Week Again
PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds on PC and console has a different development track than PUBG Mobile, similar to its first-person shooter competitor Call of Duty. While PUBG Season 10 began last week, introducing a new map called Haven that features a faction of AI-controlled fighters, PUBG Mobile has primarily been focused on its winter-themed Frost Festival event.
Frost Festival began on December 9, allowing players to explore a snow-covered battle royale map and collect unique costumes such as "Wishing Treeman," which turns characters into a light-strung tree. However, this increased attention may have also resulted in more players using cheats and mods in PUBG Mobile.
Between December 11 and 17, there were 2,127,454 accounts permanently suspended, according to a weekly report published by PUBG Mobile on Twitter. Correlation is not causation, so it's unclear whether the holiday event specifically led to this high amount of activity, but it is a substantial increase from the 1.5 million accounts suspended between December 4 and 10. The largest portion of bans last week came from Bronze users, the lowest rank in the game; whereas only two percent were Conqueror, the highest rank.
This is not the first time that PUBG Mobile bans have hit a multi-million amount of users within one week. Between August 20 and 27, 2020, PUBG Mobile also banned over two million users. The largest percentage of bans in the December sweep, 31 percent, came from users modifying their character models. X-Ray vision, auto-aim, speed hacks, and modifications to damage area also accounted for a high amount of bans, with 13 percent being "other."
The mobile version of the popular battle royale remains one of the most popular titles in its market, despite how frequently huge account bans have to take place. PUBG Mobile is one of five mobile games that made over $1 billion in 2020 (counted through December 14), and took the overall top spot above Honor of Kings, Pokemon GO, Coin Master, and Roblox by earning over $2.6 billion.
That being said, it has not been entirely smooth sailing for Tencent's mobile title this year. The game was banned in India for a few months due to privacy and cybersecurity concerns. However, in November it was announced that PUBG Mobile would return to India with an entirely new app tailored to the country.
PUBG has had an interesting year in other regards. After the announcement of The Callisto Protocol at The Game Awards 2020, a new horror game being led by the creator of Dead Space, it was revealed that the upcoming title will be set in the same universe as PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds.
PUBG Mobile is available for Android and iOS devices.
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