'PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds' Player Count Declines Even as Sales Hit 30 Million
"PlayerUnknown Battlegrounds," or more commonly shortened to just "PUBG," has already sold more than 30 million copies on Steam for the PC version alone. Despite the sales milestone, however, the game saw the first big decline in peak player count.
The number of concurrent players for "PUBG" has been on a steady decline, according to recent data compiled from numbers recorded on Steam, via Steam Charts. More specifically, the number of players online at the same time playing "PUBG" has dropped by some 5.61 percent over the last 30 days.
Given that the game's peak player count has topped three million over the past month, "PUBG" still has the former Steam chart-toppers "DOTA 2" and "CS: GO" lagging behind. Five percent of three million, however, is a big slide, accounting for about 30,000 players less in terms of the monthly average player count, according to PC Games N.
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Several reasons have been suggested for the decline, with VG 247 pointing out that the recent dip happens to coincide with Bluehole recently putting their new anti-cheating measures in place. The company has also established an entire team dedicated to eliminating exploits and cheaters, which may have led to many accounts getting banned.
Cheaters and exploits are still seen to be a huge problem, at least according to the game community whether on the "PUBG" official forums or on the game's Reddit section. Technical issues are also being seen as having a negative impact on the player count, as well.
"Bluehole has been completely silent and gone back on their word many times," one commented noted, as quoted by Kotaku. For others, it seems that other Battle Royale games like "Fortnite" have been gaining an edge, lately.
"There have been no major game updates to keep the game fresh compared to a game like 'Fortnite' which receives an update every week or two with hundreds of changes included in each update," another poster said.
