PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds is being adapted into a mobile app exclusive to players in China.
Chinese internet company Tencent officially confirmed they are developing the mobile app via a press release on their website. The gist of this announcement is that Tencent intends to deliver a mobile version of PUBG that retains the spirit and mechanics of the original game. This upcoming official adaptation of PUBG will be exclusively available to China. Tencent has not indicated that they have any plans to bring this mobile version of PUBG to the West, but most analysts are predicting that such a move is almost inevitable at this point given the size of the game’s market.
As it stands, there is no release date available for this adaptation in any market.
https://youtu.be/m0Tnp-3W3z4
Tencent‘s role in this adaptation is raising a few eyebrows amongst the PUBG community given that Tencent recently led the charge to have PUBG banned in China until it was updated to reflect “socialist core values, Chinese traditional culture and moral rules.” At this time, there has been no word regarding what kind of changes will be implemented in order to make the game more culturally sensitive. Some have speculated that Tencent‘s disapproval may have been part of the company’s larger plan to acquire the exclusive rights to publish PUBG in China.
Considering that some of the mobile PUBG knock-offs released thus far have done a fairly decent job of replicating the game – minus the cumbersome addition of touch controls – there is a chance that this mobile version of the game might not be quite as bad as you might imagine it would be.