It’s official, PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds is the biggest game in twitch history, according to concurrent players. PUBG cracked 1.3 million simultaneous players, with a high of 1,348,374. DOTA2 held the previous record of 1.29 million, set in March 2016. PUBG previously surpassed the 1 million mark only last weekend, on September 8th. The extra 300,000 is a big jump and could signal even further growth. The monstrous success is bringing in plenty of lax gamers as well, helping Steam itself hit a new high of simultaneous users (15 million).
PUBG didn’t arrive at #1 through the usual methods. This isn’t a AAA powerhouse from Activision launching on multiple platforms with millions of dollars spent on marketing. It isn’t a free-to-play multiplayer fest that can run on any rig. It’s a former Arma 3 mod (following in DOTA’s footsteps, expect PLENTY more of these now). It doesn’t run great, looks even worse, but has captured the imagination of millions who finally got the Hunger Games simulator they never knew they wanted. It’s still in bloody early access!
The interesting story going forward will be where it goes from here. It’s hard to imagine the concurrent player record could get even higher, but we’ve already seen it snowball this far. For example, I still haven’t played it, but am continually intrigued to at least give it a shot at this point. The larger it gets, the more exposure to gamers that would usually ignore online gaming of this variety. Friends invite friends and so on it goes.
DOTA 2 dipped from its 1.29 million to sit around 800-900 thousand for the past seven months. Although it had already been above and below one million before the 1.29 milestone.
Are you a part of the craze? Do you think Player Unknown Battlegrounds will stick around at the top or at least in the top ten? Let us know in the comments below.
