The online battle royale video game "PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds" continues to rise in popularity as it surpassed Valve's own "Dota 2" for the most concurrent players on Saturday with more than 870,000 players online at the same time.
With this breakthrough, the game also becomes the only third title to surpass the 800,000 mark after "Dota 2" and "Counter-Strike: Global Offensive." "PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds" also surpassed "Counter-Strike: Global Offensive" for the second most concurrent players in all-time records behind only the 1.2 million players recorded by "Dota 2."
Saturday's numbers showed that "PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds" peaked at 876,849 players while "Dota 2" peaked at 842,919. This marks the first time that the relatively new first person shooter has surpassed the battle arena game "Dota 2" in this regard.
However, the game's seat at the top spot will probably not last long. The massively popular "Dota 2" is known to breach the one million player mark from time to time.
The achievement did not come without repercussions, as the game's servers went down the next day. The event was a big milestone for "PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds," which had only opened its early access program early this year. The game's popularity is only expected to increase when it officially launches later in the year.
Since the game opened for early access in March, the number of players have grown in an increasing rate, with the game selling over 8 million copies as of last week. This means that the game has sold eight million copies in only six months.
The content of the game also continues to increase, as the developers recently announced that a new desert-themed map will be coming soon.
With its quickly rising popularity, it will not come as a surprise if "PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds" will continue to challenge "Dota 2" in the number of online players in the coming months. Perhaps soon, the game will be able to reach the one million players milestone.
