PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds (PUBG) has just surpassed Dota 2 as the largest game in Steam history, hitting an all-time peak concurrent player count of 1,348,374.
(Steam Charts as of Sept 16, 2017)
It was only last week that PUBG became the 2nd game ever on Steam to pass the one million mark. This gain of over 300,000 concurrent players in just seven days is nothing short of extraordinary, especially considering there are just four other Steam games that have ever passed 300,000 concurrent players in their lifetime (GTA V, Dota 2, CS:GO and Fallout 4).
What’s even more crazy is that the player growth has little reason to slow down. With virtually no competition on Steam at the moment, including the struggles of LawBreakers, and the exceptional developer support from Bluehole Studios, my gut tells me we haven’t seen the last of PUBG’s milestones. Furthermore, this game hasn’t even left early-access yet. There is still a huge update coming sometime in Q4 that will include new maps, mechanics and many quality optimizations, probably a strong marketing campaign too.
So everything continues to look optimistic for PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds through this holiday season and beyond. So much so that it wouldn’t surprise me to see some more battle-royal shooters and PUBG look-a-likes start popping up in 2018.