Justin Bieber takes on the metaverse.
More than 100 million people across the world have viewed Justin Bieber’s in-game performance from last month on Free Fire. A brand new song, named “Beautiful Love (Free Fire),” was debuted by the pop artist during the performance. The game’s developer, Garena, has just published an official music video for the song, which depicts Bieber’s in-game character model performing the song. This is great news for everyone who couldn’t make it to the show but still wants to listen to the current Bieber album.
To those who may not know, Bieber’s performance marked the fifth anniversary of the introduction of Free Fire, a multiplayer online fighting arena game, in August of 2017. The game is only playable on iOS and Android devices, and it is quite similar to other games in the same genre, such as PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds (PUBG). More than $4 billion in revenue has been generated for creator Garena over the past five years, and the game shows no signs of slowing down in its popularity. It’s odd that Free Fire hasn’t made the leap from mobile devices, but the game is obviously doing rather well in that department right now.
Concert events have grown commonplace in games like Free Fire, Fortnite, and Roblox over the past few years. Digital concert events of this sort may have looked novel at first, but they have allowed musicians to connect with fans they may not have otherwise had access to. Having a megastar like Justin Bieber perform probably also helped Free Fire gain new users. Since Bieber’s halftime show has been seen so many times, it’s a fair bet that more and more high-profile performances like this will occur in the future.
