The PC and console version of PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds has a vastly different roadmap to PUBG Mobile. PUBG Season 10 was launched last week, which brought in a brand-new map called Haven that introduced a new set of AI enemies who have no qualms about attacking players on sight.
PUBG Mobile, on the other hand, has mostly been concentrating on its seasonal Frost Festival event. This event in question started last December 9, and it introduced a snow-covered battle royale map to the players where they can obtain one-of-a-kind costumes like the “Wishing Treeman.” This outfit in particular turns the player into a decorated Christmas tree — very fitting for the season.
Unfortunately, PUBG Mobile gaining even more traction and popularity may have a downside, as the usage of cheats and mods have also increased. According to PUBG Mobile’s weekly report post on Twitter, PUBG Corporation permanently banned 2,127,454 accounts between December 11 and 17.
From December 11th-17th, 2,127,454 accounts have been permanently suspended from accessing our game, out of which these are the majority of the reasons:
⬜ X-Ray Vision
⬜ Auto Aim Hacks
⬜ Modification of Character Models pic.twitter.com/AdA8iItjqJ— PUBG MOBILE (@PUBGMOBILE) December 20, 2020
We can’t say for sure if the holiday event is the cause for this boost, but we can’t deny that the increase is indeed considerable compared to the other week’s, as days between December 4 and 10 only suspended around 1.5 million accounts.
For last week in particular, many of the banned accounts had a Bronze ranking, which is the lowest rank in PUBG Mobile. On the other hand, only 2% of those banned accounts were Conquerors, which is the highest rank.
That being said, the mobile battle royale is no stranger to banning millions of users within just one week. As a matter of fact, PUBG Mobile also suspended over 2 million users last August 20 through 27, 2020. For this December cleanup though, about 31% of the banned users were suspended for implementing modifications to their character models.
Modifications such as auto-aim, x-ray vision, speed hacks, and alterations to the damage area are also some of the major causes for the bans. Only 13% accounted for “other” reasons.
Even though PUBG Mobile constantly cleans out its playerbase and suspends those it has discovered to be cheating, the mobile port is still considered to be one of the most popular games in the mobile gaming market.
As a matter of fact, PUBG Mobile is on the list of games that accumulated over $1 billion in 2020 alone, according to a report by Sensor Tower. The mobile title earned $2.6 billion from January 1, 2020 through December 14, 2020, and placed first above other major games such as Coin Master, Roblox, Honor of Kings, and Pokemon GO.
With all that said, it hasn’t necessarily been a smoothsailing year for Tencent’s PUBG Mobile. India banned the mobile title for several months due to cybersecurity and privacy reasons. Fortunately for the fans who live there, it was announced in November that the ban would be lifted in the form of a brand-new app that will be created specifically for the country.
Without a doubt, 2020 has been an interesting year for PUBG Mobile, which is essentially the case for most games this year. The upcoming game The Callisto Protocol, which was initially announced during The Game Awards 2020, has been confirmed to bet set in the same universe sa PUBG. We’re definitely excited to see how that plays out.
