Weeks after surpassing the hugely popular battle arena game "Defense of the Ancients 2" for the most number of concurrent players on Steam with 1.5 million online users, "PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds," now the platform's biggest game, is not slowing down, as it closed in on the two million mark.
"Battlegrounds" broke its own record and peaked at 1.96 million online gamers Monday. The popularity of the game continues to rise, and breaking the two million barrier would be an amazing, but not unexpected feat.
The game reached a peak of one million concurrent users less than a month ago, and its popularity is only expected to rise. Brendan "PlayerUnknown" Greene himself has lofty expectations for his massive game. He believeds that if developer Bluehole Studios makes the right decisions, "PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds" could reach 100 million monthly users.
"Our sales curves are just going up. They're not slowing down. I'm still waiting for that plateau, and it's just not happening yet," Greene told Games Industry. "When you ask about growth on PC, I just look at League of Legends. 100 million active users a month, I think, something stupid like that? If we play our cards right, maybe we can get to that level of users."
Since the game's early access launch in March, the game's following has increased in a feverish rate. The game averaged 107,000 players in May, then doubled that number by July with 229,000 average users. The title then tripled that number in two months, posting an average of 660,000 users in September.
This kind of explosive increase in popularity is astounding, especially for a game that is technically not finished yet. The game is still on its early access, with the official launch set before the end of the year. Bluehole has also announced that an Xbox One version of the game will also be released later this year.
