As of late, the esports industry is witnessing a thriving new niche. Specifically, I’m referring to mobile Battle Royale games. Here at esportsguide, we’ve recently witnessed the spectacularly rise of Garena Free Fire. Indeed, such a title sits in the same pond as PUBG Mobile. Read on as we dive into a quick comparison between the two!
Interlaced Origins
Surprisingly, Garena Free Fire was published first, back in 2017. Suffering from a weaker release, it took a while to gain ground. Meanwhile, PUBG Mobile took the world by storm in 2018, as it garnered 600 million players within a year thanks to the support from mobile esports giant – Tencent. However, Garena Free Fire managed to bounce back massively as evident below.
Garena Free Fire Smashing Player Count Records
Indeed, the story is now shifting. Two separate reports dive into the active player count of both mobile esports titles. Accordingly, here’s how the active player count sits for both:
- Garena Free Fire – 80 million daily (May 2020)
- PUBG Mobile – 50 million daily (March 2020)
So what’s going on? How did Garena Free Fire manage to mount such a comeback? To try and understand, let’s take a look at some key differences between the two titles.
Highlighting the Stark Contrasts
Accordingly, I’ll be presenting some differences in the following bullets:
- In terms of design, Free Fire can be considered more cosmetic with an art style comparable to that of Fortnite. Meanwhile, PUBG Mobile is committed to a war theme, with realistic maps and infrastructures.
- Battle Royale structure – PUBG Mobile sticks to 100 players in a massive map while Free Fire is more fast-paced 50 player game on a smaller map.
- Performance differs too. Indeed, Garena Free Fire is purposefully designed for lower spec devices to run at higher frame rates while PUBG Mobile is a more graphically refined experience.
- Skills and Abilities. This is where GFF shines as it implements a ‘hero’ system where every character, after being unlocked, can offer different skills and abilities to compliment your playstyle.
- What about weapons? In this field, PUBG Mobile shows off its 40 different weapons with GFF suffering from a smaller arsenal.
The two games are offering very different experiences. This extends to viewership too.
Viewership Trends
In terms of viewership, it’s also quite tight. Here’s a direct comparison of two tier 1 esports events for each scene which took place (if partially) this weekend:
- PUBG Mobile Global Championship Season 0 – 1,217,923 Peak Viewers (Event not concluded)
- Free Fire Continental Series 2020 Asia – 1,581,517 Peak Viewers (22-29th Nov)
From just that alone, it’s already quite close. Especially when you consider that the PUBG Mobile event has $2,000,000 on the line compared to the $300,000 for the GFF event!
Both esports scenes are growing with each month, though it’s worth noting that Garena Free Fire seems to be doing so at a faster rate. Competitive PUBG Mobile is definitely at an all-time high, with the announcement of Global Championships while GFF is still pushing the ceiling.
I’d like to point out that many have justified GFF‘s massive instantaneous growth due to the fact that PUBG Mobile has been recently banned from India. Logically, this threw millions of players into the open air, needing a battle royale mobile experience to comply.
Carving a New Niche in the Industry – Backed By Us
The aim of this discussion was not to try to determine which title is better compared to the other. No, all we’ve done here is stack the numbers and ideas against one another, serving as a general commentary over the recent changes in the esports industry. This also serves as another opportunity for us to remind our readers here at esportsguide, that Garena Free Fire will now be actively covered together with our other esports.
