Custom matches are coming for everyone in PUBG soon, but may not be free

Free in beta, but could change for launch

Custom matches in PUBG have been a feature for partnered players for a while now. Allowing one to tweak basically every facet of gameplay, custom matches are great for mixing up the general gameplay and making PUBG feel a bit more refreshing than the standard game mode. Having been promised for months, the feature is now available on test servers to iron out the kinks before its official launch.

Custom matches will work will all game modes including the limited time “War” game type and zombies mode. Players will be able to host their own games with variable match parameters including player count, spawn rate for items and even circle speed. This is all pretty great, but of course, it can’t be 100% positive with PUBG.

As noted on the Steam community forum post, “Creating custom matches won’t have an associated cost during this phase [the beta]. However, due to the extremely large amount of resources required to allow custom games to be available to all players, we may change this in the future to ensure everything runs smoothly and the system remains sustainable long-term.” Unless I’m mistaken, that reads like custom games will become a paid feature in the future.

On the one hand, I can understand needing to cover the costs of maintaining your game servers. On the other hand, PUBG earned $700 million USD last year. The game has shifted more than 50 million copies on Steam and is still growing. There are also loot boxes in-game that sometimes sell for ridiculously high prices on the Steam marketplace. If PUBG Corp is going to charge for custom games, shouldn’t loot crates then be entirely free?

Whatever the reason, the feature is definitely coming sooner rather than later. I suppose now would be the time to let PUBG Corp know that custom matches should be free, especially since they sound open to fan reception. “We’re open to your feedback on this system,” reads the post, “and we’ll have more details on this aspect of the system later.”

Custom Match Update – Open Beta Test [Steam Community]