For some unknown reason, "PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds" ("PUBG") seems to be losing the battle royale war. This is despite the increasing sales figure as there's a reported significant drop in the game's player count.
This could mean that players are simply leaving the game or perhaps taking a break from the 100-man deathmatch formula. Data from Steam's application programming interface (API) indicates that the number of active players in "PUBG" is sharply declining. This might be worrisome for the developers of the game since a plateau was expected in the trend after the peak instead of a decline.
Showing an abrupt decrease as well is the concurrent player count or the number of gamers playing at the same time. Back in the middle of January, the peak concurrent players for "PUBG" numbered in at around 3.2 million players, but the most recent reports showed only about 2.2 million concurrent players. This is quite a dramatic drop, especially for a game that was just released a few months ago.
Some factors assumed to be the reason for players leaving the game is the reduced hype for it, resulting in diminished excitement for the 1.0 release version, and the sheer popularity of the game is probably already slipping away. Another factor is that the battle royale gaming market is getting saturated right now, and the genre is also readily becoming more available on smartphones and consoles.
Meanwhile, "Fortnite: Battle Royale," "PUBG's" biggest competitor in the battle royale market, has surpassed its record for the biggest number of concurrent players. The free-to-play battle royale game is also readily available on the PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC while "PUBG" is only currently available on the latter two platforms.
Last but not the least, it is speculated that the bulk of the people who left could have been cheaters who have been discouraged by "PUBG's" stern anti-cheat and anti-hack measures that have purged hundreds of thousands of players last month.
Regardless of the dwindling numbers, "PUBG's" developers will have to work harder to maintain the game's status in the battle royale genre and market.
