It looks like slapping Xiaomi's brand name to anything instantly grabs everyone's attention and in this case, a game much like PUBG Mobile is making the headlines. While many reports suggested that Xiaomi launched a PUBG Mobile knockoff to lure Redmi and Mi phone users, the circulated information is anything but true.
Survival Game, the new battle royale game, joins the pool of many similar games available on app stores and strikes a little resemblance to PUBG Mobile. In fact, we briefly checked out the game and found it to be a cheap knockoff of PUBG Mobile.
Marred by low-end graphics and scarce loot items, Survival Game doesn't have the potential to get anywhere close to PUBG Mobile's success. In fact, the only way we could find the app on Mi App Store is by fully typing out Survival Game.
As you can see from the screenshots of the game below, the developer of Survival Game is SuperEdguy. There's no link to Xiaomi whatsoever, which questions the poorly-investigated reports from leading media houses, including Indian Express.
On the bright side, Survival Game weighs only 185MB, which is a hugely trimmed down from PUBG Mobile's approximately 1.8GB file size. This allows the game to operate on low-end phones with as low as 1GB RAM. So if you feel you're missing out on the PUBG Mobile action, this is a nice way to get a feel of what's it like to be a part of the discussions around battle royale games such as Fortnite and PUBG Mobile.
But don't expect to get the same feel on Survival Game as on PUBG Mobile. There's a huge difference in the overall gaming experience between both the games, but Survival Game gets some basic ideas right.
For instance, there starts off the same way as PUBG Mobile and players must land in a specific location in a parachute to start their loot and go on a killing spree to win in the end. There are solo and squad options, but only one map for now.
According to Digit, which accurately reported that Survival Game is not by Xiaomi, there are only five guns in the game and more are expected to be added in time. The game interface and menus are identical to PUBG Mobile. There are some unique elements such as the avatars, a space ship to carry all players before they jump off, a jetpack that allows players to glide into the air, and new hovering vehicles.
This is not the first time a game has been trying to hop on PUBG's popularity and success. Another PUBG clone Knives Out by NetEase mastered the art of cloning and found more success than its original counterparts. According to Sensor Tower, Knives Out made more money than Fornite and PUBG on a mobile platform, raking in a whopping $465 million. Fortnite came in second at $455 million.
