'PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds' News: Player Count Declines for the First Time Since Release
For the first time since the game released in Early Access nearly a year ago, "PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds" (PUBG) experienced a drop in player count.
Ever since it first came out in March 2017, PUBG quickly became one of the de facto games on Steam and quickly climbed the charts to become the most played game on the platform, at one point even beating out Valve's own "Counter-Strike: Global Offensive" and "DOTA 2." And while it looked like the game was just going to continue growing, recent updates and other external factors seem to have put a halt to that, and the game has actually lost players within the past month.
SteamCharts reports that over the past 30 days, PUBG has lost around 60,000 players, which amount to a four percent loss to the player base. While it is not a lot, it is still the first time in the game's history that it experienced a negative gain in players.
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While the PUBG Corporation has yet to comment on the subject, it seems the biggest cause for this shift is the growing number of cheaters in the game, as well as how the game still runs somewhat poorly even on the best machines.
There is also the fact that, unlike last year, PUBG actually has some serious competition these days. Ever since Epic Games created the Battle Royale mode for "Fortnite," several players seem to have jumped ship to the more cartoonish and, more importantly, free-to-play game. Earlier this month, Epic Games announced that "Fortnite" had actually hit 3.4 million concurrent players, which beats PUBG's record of 3.2 million.
Looking at the big picture, a four percent loss may not seem like much, but it is a sign that players are discontented with the direction PUBG is going and how the developers are handling their game. It might be time for the PUBG Corporation to double down on their efforts to making their game good lest they want to be overtaken by their competition.
