Bluehole’s Player Unknown’s Battlegrounds (PUBG) has been breaking records since it was released in March this year, becoming the most popular game worldwide. Following on from news earlier in the year that the game developer would be teaming up with Kakao Games to publish a Korean version of the game, now the company has announced that it will charging PC rooms (internet cafes) according to gameplay time — and owners of PC rooms aren’t happy.
PUBG is already extremely popular in Korea, but unlike most other countries, players in Korea prefer to play in PC rooms (internet cafes). It is currently the most played game in PC rooms nationwide at 24.28%, surpassing favorites such as League of Legends (23.62%) and Overwatch (13.73%). The game has already sold over 18 million copies and some PC rooms have even created “PUBG Zones” to indicate which computers have the game installed.
Bluehole announced today that it would charge PC rooms at an hourly rate while customers play PUBG. Currently, copies of the game are strictly limited to personal use, and using them at commercial locations such as internet cafes is strictly prohibited by Steam. Bluehole sent out a notice to businesses in July reminding them of the rules, but the overwhelming popularity has led some PC rooms to buy copies for customers for use.
Though Steam has its own licensing program, as a Korean company it makes sense for Bluehole to deal with PC rooms more directly. The Internet PC Culture Association (IPCA), which represents 12,000 PC rooms around Korea, is pushing back on the announcement saying that Bluehole is using the popularity of the game to charge excessive fees.
According to Chosun Ilbo, the organization is threatening action if the Bluehole goes ahead with the new system. Bluehole is by no means the first company to charge by the hour for the commercial use of games, with Blizzard also doing the same for Starcraft: Remastered, resulting in a spat with the IPCA which is still ongoing. It now appears that one of the main reasons for partnering with Kakao Games is for more direct and locally-managed distribution of the game to the PC room industry.
PUBG is still in early access, with the first official release expected to be launched on PC and Xbox by the end of this year with numerous new features, bug fixes and optimizations.
