PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds will be getting a new way of unlocking cosmetic items outside of their crate and key system. the PUBG event pass will begin with Sanhok on June 22, giving you different challenges with cosmetic rewards themed to each map and hang on a minute, isn’t that basically the Fortnite Battle Pass system? Cheeky, PUBG Corp.
The first PUBG event pass will be the Sanhok event pass, giving you a selection of challenges to complete on all maps but rewarding you with Sanhok-themed cosmetic content. It’ll be releasing alongside the release of the map itself, and while you can complete the challenges with your progress tracked for free, to claim the rewards you’ll have to buy the event pass. The event pass will last for four weeks, during which you’ll get daily, weekly, and map-specific missions in order to balance your progression. It bears a striking resemblance to Fortnite‘s battle pass system because irony is dead.
According to the announcement post on Steam, “If you haven’t paid for the pass, you can temporarily unlock many of the items (and earn one special item permanently).” The reasoning for introducing these event passes was so that PUBG Corp could introduce an alternative means of monetizing the game besides their key and crate system “without limiting it to DLC,” as they’d already promised last year at the Game Awards that all of PUBG‘s maps would be provided for free so not to divide up the player base in those who pay extra and those who don’t.
It’s a very unusual announcement filled with apparent self-awareness of how the current key and crate system screws over players due to the regulated rarity present within it, and we still don’t know exact details or a price for the PUBG event pass despite it releasing on June 22 this Friday. If you want to read the announcement in full, you can find it on the PUBG Steam page in all its glory.
