PUBG Mobile may be a household name in the battle royale genre, but it has been eclipsed by rival game Free Fire in the United States.
Free Fire made about $100 million in the last three months, while Tencent’s PUBG Mobile managed only $68 million, according to intelligence data from analytics company Sensor Tower. Free Fire’s revenue for the first quarter of 2021 in the United States has increased by 4.5 times in comparison to last year’s. PUBG Mobile, on the other hand, increased 9 percent.
Related: PUBG Mobile made over $240 million last month
Trailing the two popular mobile shooter games in the U.S. is Activision’s Call of Duty: Mobile, which made about $62 million last quarter. This represents an increase of about 80 percent year-on-year. The game has been developed by Tencent’s Timi Studios in a partnership with Activision.
Free Fire has been published by Singaporean game development company, Garena. It was released in September 2017 and has since been solidifying itself in the battle royale and shooter genre on mobile.
The game is extremely popular in developing countries of Southeast Asia, Brazil, and India. Garena has been trying to change this, however, with collaborations with famous personalities from around the world. This includes American musician DJ KSHMR and Netflix series, Money Heist.
The most notable collaboration came in December 2020, when the game tied up with renowned Portuguese footballer Cristiano Ronaldo. As part of this, Ronaldo was added into Free Fire as a playable character called Chrono.
