PUBG Lite was launched in India in July 2019 and gathered a significant audience as it was free-to-play and much less demanding than the original PUBG.
PUBG Lite developers announced last month that the game will be reaching end of service today, April 29. In a termination schedule shared by the developers on March 30, the team announced that the first step in the termination process will be shutting down the lite.pubg.com webpage followed by end of service on April 29. PUBG Lite is a toned down version of PUBG making it playable on low-end PC setups. It follows the same battle royale concept and unlike the original PUBG for PC, PUBG Lite was free-to-play.
After the ban of PUBG Mobile in India in September Last Year, the company has been working on making a comeback in the country, and during the announcement of PUBG: New State had said that it is still focused on PUBG Mobile India for the country. On PC, PUBG was not banned, and PUBG Lite made the game accessible to a large number of people.
Today, April 29, marks the end of service for PUBG Lite as announced by the developers late last month. As of 5am UTC (10:30am IST), PUBG Lite will stop working which means players will not be able to get into matches or spend their in-game currency anymore. Till now, even though the lite.pubg.com webpage was shut down and new downloads of the game were stopped last month, players who already had the game were allowed to play PUBG Lite as usual.
The termination schedule also states that from May 29, player support for PUBG Lite will not be available. This would mark the completion of the termination process for the game that launched in India in July 2019. The PUBG LITE Facebook page, however, will continue to operate even after the service ends.
The developer of the game, PUBG Corporation, and publisher Krafton did not share a reason for termination and in their original announcement said, “We are deeply grateful for the passion and support from the astounding number of PUBG LITE fans that have been with us. During the strenuous times of the COVID-19 pandemic, we hope that PUBG LITE was able to provide our fans a fun way to stay safe. Unfortunately, we have made the difficult decision to close service after much deliberation and the time has come for our journey to end. We regretfully inform you that service of PUBG LITE is scheduled to end on April 29th, 2021 (UTC).”
Since launch, PUBG Lite has become quite popular due to its low requirements and capability of running on everyday use laptops, on top of being free-to-play. Back in December 2020, the game became 100 percent free as all in-game content became free and the L-COIN (paid cash) top-up system was terminated.