'Player Unknown's Battlegrounds' First Game To Reach 2 Million Players On Steam
"Player Unknown's Battlegrounds" makes history once again as the first game to reach 2 million concurrent players on Steam. Since its release in Steam Early Access, the battle royale survival shooter has beaten the likes of "Dota 2," "Counter-Strike: Global Offensive," and "Team Fortress 2" to claim the title of the most-played game on the platform.
While the achievement is a massive benchmark on its own, it also shows just how much potential it has. The game is still technically in its beta phase and currently available on a single platform. With its upcoming release on the Xbox One, the current player figure will like to blow out of proportions in the coming months.
However, success is a double-edged sword as the game was plagued by server issues earlier this month. According to the game's developer Bluehole, the sudden flood of new players particularly from Asia proved too much for their servers.
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Bluehole only expected around a million players to purchase the game which can already be considered too optimistic. However, after word-of-mouth marketing particularly from Twitch streamers, the game slowly snowballed in popularity eventually surpassing Valve's own "Dota 2" which previously held the record of most concurrent players with over 1.2 million players.
Fortunately, the development team has remedied the server issues and "Player Unknown's Battlegrounds" is back in form. The game already received publishing support from Microsoft upon release with the tech giant reportedly planning to extend the game's exclusivity to the Xbox One.
The game's popularity also popularized the Battle Royale survival genre with many studios also hoping to capitalize on its popularity. Fortnite, the base-building survival game, in particular, created its own version of the battle royale genre blending the base-building elements of its own title with the PUBG's gameplay.
The games were so similar that Bluehole eventually accused Fortnite of creating a "carbon copy" of the game. They have threatened legal action but so far, no complaint has been filed.
"Player Unknown's Battlegrounds" is currently available for Microsoft Windows via Steam.
