Bluehole has sold 30 million copies of PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds on Steam, matching the former total audience across PC and Xbox One, according to Bloomberg’s Yuji Nakamura. But for the first time in the game’s relatively short life -- remember, PUBG isn’t even a year old yet -- it looks like Battlegrounds might be losing some momentum.
It can be a little tough to get a clear picture of PUBG’s current community size, given that a) Bluehole rarely releases hard sales data and b) a combination of piracy and differing platform holders all but ensure we’ll never have an accurate headcount for the Battlegrounds fandom. PUBG made headlines back in January after the combined sales of its Steam and Xbox One Game Preview variants surged past the 30 million mark. But now it’s believed more than 30 million people are playing the game just on PC. That number is likely to see continued growth now that testing on iOS and Android versions, developed via a partnership with Tencent, is underway in China. Even if those ports don’t make it to Europe and North America.
The latest numbers seem all the more impressive when you remember BattlEye recently banned more than one million Battlegrounds players during the month of January. Those bans won’t impact sales, but it’s possible they’ve had some impact on concurrent player counts. Just not the impact Bluehole and PUBG Corp. were probably hoping for. According to Nakamura, who polled SteamDB data, peak player activity for PUBG has slowly declined since early-to-mid January. The staggering number of bans certainly played a role in those figures; however, some (including Nakamura) wonder if the dip could suggest Bluehole needs to do more to reduce cheating. Otherwise Battlegrounds risks losing more momentum (and players) to its largest competitor, Epic Games’ Fortnite: Battle Royale.
PUBG hit 30m in sales this week, but it is churning hard. Bluehole still not taking cheaters seriously enough imo pic.twitter.com/Iqjz8BPzVE
— Yuji Nakamura (@ynakamura56) February 14, 2018
PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds is available on Xbox One and PC. A PS4 port is still expected; however, there’s no timeline for its debut.
Be sure to check back with Player.One and follow Scott on Twitter for more PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds news in 2018 and as long as PUBG Corp. supports PUBG in the years ahead.
