PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds’ esports scene is in a bit of a state at the moment. Dozens of teams have released their rosters, players have retired from competitive play, and there’s been a big shake up of the esports team over at PUBG Corp. And while there’s lots of reasons teams are pulling out from competitive play, one is the poor performance of the revenue sharing scheme, which, according to Ghost Gaming only delivered a couple of hundred dollars last year.
Matt Dillon, Ghost’s CEO, who last month announced the release of its PUBG roster, confirmed that the organisation only received $173.49 from the sales of the custom baseball bat produced for the National PUBG League last year. For the Phase Two jackets, Ghost took home a share of $335.91.
Dillon has previously said Ghost invested “hundreds of thousands of dollars” into PUBG, so to see such small returns from a revenue share scheme is insulting.
Last year, one month before the Global Championship, teams were told they would not be getting promised branded in-game skins due to development problems. These skins, which were to feed directly into a revenue sharing scheme, were replaced with 12 generic PGI skins, of which 50% of the revenue were shared among participating teams.
As a result, teams lost out on direct revenue from their fans and people were quick to voice their opinion on the matter. Luke ‘iuKeEe’ Dainton, FaZe Clan’s manager told The Loadout that 2020 will be “make or break for PUBG Esports.”
Why did @GhostGaming exit @PUBGEsports in one tweet? We received $173.49 in revenue sharing for the NPL bat. What a joke. pic.twitter.com/E5CN9xLKZT
— Matt Dillon (@MattDillonGG) January 7, 2020
Since then, PUBG Corp has announced its plans for the 2020 season. A Global Series with three Majors will take place over the course of the year, with the top teams qualifying to play in the Global Championship in November. The tournaments will have larger prize pools that will be supported by crowdfunding initiatives.
Hopefully these changes mean PUBG Corp is seriously taking stock of the criticism levelled at them by organisations and the current situation will improve.