PUBG Player base Declining over Time

According to Steam Charts, which tracks the player numbers for games played on PC through Steam, PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds has been suffering as of late. January of this year saw a massive high-water mark set for the game, as it enjoyed an average concurrent player-base of 1,584,886, with the peak number reaching a massive 3,236,027. Unfortunately, the same numbers can’t be claimed right now, with the average player numbers for May only hitting 876,180 with a high peak number of 2,175,704.

One of the possible answers for this downward trend could be the rapid rise of competitor game Fortnite from Epic Games. The hugely popular free-to-play Battle Royale is not run through Steam, so it’s difficult to track its player base, however in a blog post back in February of this year detailing the reasons for some of their server issues, Epic Games did reveal that Fortnite had hit a new peak of 3.4 million concurrent players.

We’re not 100% sure if the numbers thrown around by Epic are reflective of their PC player base, or their entire player base including console numbers, but the fact remains that since then the game has only grown in leaps and bounds, while the evidence suggests that quite a few PUBG players are logging out and not logging back in. To add fuel to the fires of competition between these two teams is the fact that PUBG developer Bluehole is taking Epic Games to court in Korea citing copyright violations. How this plays out remains to be seen, however the developer can’t be too happy about their numbers not rising to the peaks they once achieved.