Lately the 24-hour peak for PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds on Steam has been hovering around the 1.5 million mark, meaning less than half of the people who played during its peak are still playing the game regularly. Its average number of players has also been declining since January, with an average of 854,115 players in the last 30 days.
Even though PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds has had its concurrent player count cut in half, it’s still one of the most popular PC games by a wide margin. Considering this, fans shouldn’t write the game off, but some may be wondering what factors caused gamers to move on to other experiences.
There are a couple of big possibilities that spring to mind immediately when it comes to the question of why players are leaving PUBG. First off, the game has a problem with cheaters, with hacks making players immune to circle damage or just generally invincible. PUBG Corp has aggressively attempted to curb cheating in the game, but even so, the problem persists.
Another reason why PUBG’s player count has dropped could be due to the rising popularity of Fortnite. Ever since the introduction of Fortnite’s free-to-play battle royale mode, the game has overtaken PUBG in player count, Twitch viewership, revenue earned, and other metrics, making it arguably the most popular game in the world at the time of this writing. It’s reasonable to assume that at least some of PUBG’s fan base has abandoned the shooter in favor of Epic’s foray into the genre instead.
Again, though, it’s important to stress that just because PUBG is seeing a decline in players, it doesn’t mean the game is in danger. In fact, PUBG remains one of the most popular games currently available, and as long as the developers continue to support it with new content, it shouldn’t be going anywhere any time soon.
PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds is out now for Android, iOS, and PC, and is available on Xbox One through early access.
Source: SteamCharts (via PCGamesN)
