The website PlayerCounter puts PUBG’s total at around 400 million players worldwide since its release in 2017, on phones, computers and video game consoles. “It distracts me from the city, the attacks, the robberies, the thieves and the crime.”

“I get so busy with the game I forget about the world,” he said. Leaning outside Habib’s den, Ali, 23, pointed to the headphones around his neck, bought specifically to play PUBG so he can disappear in the game with his friends. “Now I barely have enough to get bread and food for the family.” “I used to earn 800 afs a day,” Popalzai said. It’s a little shop, with garage-roller doors, a generator, four TVs, four Playstations and an aging foosball table. Now its popularity is cutting into Habib’s business and that of others in the industry.Ībdullah Popalzai, 20, has his own game center across the street from Sharifi’s house. That’s when the fixation on PUBG took off. But his business was hit hard in the first months of the coronavirus pandemic when he - and dozens of other Kabul gaming dens - shut down for two months. The mix of children, teenagers, parents and assorted adults pay around 65 cents to play for an hour. Habib has rented his den for four years usually about 100 people a day come through. “If you can’t fight in the real war, you can do it virtually,” Habib said of violent video games, including PUBG.

Afghan find escape game