Playerunknown's Battlegrounds has kept a steady momentum going since first launching into Early Access this past March. The game quickly soared past sales milestones, recently passing 8 million copies sold, and over the weekend managed to finally surpass Dota 2 in terms of concurrent players.
On Sunday, Playerunknown's Battlegrounds creator Brendan Greene shared that the game had peaked at 877,844 players on August 27, beating out Dota 2 as the then-most played game on Steam by just under 35,000 players.
But while it’s worth noting that Valve’s MOBA still holds the Steam-wide record for all-time peak players (1.2 million in March 2016), Playerunknown's Battlegrounds' weekend milestone and ongoing momentum don't bode well for Dota 2’s record.
For reference, just one month ago Playerunknown’s Battlegrounds became the third most-played game of all time on Steam with 481,291 concurrent players, just below Counter-Strike: Global Offensive and Dota 2.
Now, with its 877,844 peak concurrent players, Playerunknown’s Battlegrounds has also seemingly surpassed Counter-Strike: Global Offensive’s April 2016 record of 850,485 peak players to become the second most concurrently played game on Steam.
Part of the reason for the game’s ballooning player counts, at least according to third-party Steam tracker SteamSpy, could be thanks to its popularity with Counter-Strike: Global Offensive players. That data says that 55 percent of current Playerunknown’s Battlegrounds owners are also Counter-Strike: Global Offensive players with higher-than-average playtimes.
While that group previously played as much as 50 percent more Counter-Strike: Global Offensive than most, their playtimes have reportedly dropped to 30 percent less than the average player since the rise of Playerunknown's Battlegrounds.
#1 on @steam_games! Thank you all, once again, for the continuing support you are showing the #PUBG team <3 pic.twitter.com/aBPkP5O2Qg
— PLAYERUNKNOWN (@PLAYERUNKNOWN) August 27, 2017