PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds continues to break all sorts of records on Steam. The former kings of the castle, Valve’s own Dota 2 and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, are not even close to the battle royale juggernaut and the number of people playing it at once. Today, PUBG passed another huge milestone: topping 3 million concurrent players for the first time ever.
The next highest total for any game besides PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds is Dota 2. Its record is about 1.3 million. The Steam Database Twitter account documented PUBG‘s feat:
.@PUBATTLEGROUNDS has finally reached 3 million concurrent players! https://t.co/HIkZMh7mCB pic.twitter.com/eJwXXSfHJD
— SteamDB (@SteamDB) December 29, 2017
That is an astounding statistic. PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds only recently got a full release, graduating from Early Access just over a week ago. It also recently got a release onto the Xbox One. PUBG has taken the gaming world by storm over the last year, winning a huge amount of awards (despite its buggy and unfinished state), receiving plenty of Game of the Year nods, popularizing a genre, and spawning countless bandwagon hoppers.
All is not rosy in the world of PUBG, however. 3 million players is definitely a lot, but BattlEye, who runs the game’s anti-cheat software, shared this depressing statistic:
Update on the number of PUBG bans: 1,500,000.
— BattlEye (@TheBattlEye) December 28, 2017
In the past, BattlEye has stated that they ban several thousand accounts per day in PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds, many of them from China. As the game increases in popularity, the cheaters will rise with it. Hopefully the game will continue to find ways to fight against cheaters as it gains in popularity, users, and visibility. It seems that honest players running into too many cheaters may be the only thing that can slow down PUBG‘s massive growth.
So, the meteoric rise of PUBG continues, and where it will stop is anyone’s guess. Surely the holiday season has some effect on these recent, massive numbers, but there is no indication that PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds is stopping anytime soon. How high do you think it can climb before finally plateauing? Let us know in the comments below.
In the past, BattlEye has stated that they ban several thousand accounts per day in PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds, many of them from China. As the game increases in popularity, the cheaters will rise with it. Hopefully the game will continue to find ways to fight against cheaters as it gains in popularity, users, and visibility. It seems that honest players running into too many cheaters may be the only thing that can slow down PUBG‘s massive growth.
So, the meteoric rise of PUBG continues, and where it will stop is anyone’s guess. Surely the holiday season has some effect on these recent, massive numbers, but there is no indication that PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds is stopping anytime soon. How high do you think it can climb before finally plateauing? Let us know in the comments below.
