PUBG Looks to Have Lost Nearly Half Its Steam Player Count Since January

PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds has lost nearly half its Steam player base since its January peak, according to data provided by video game tracking sites.

SteamCharts shows that PUBG is now down to a peak of 1.75 million players in the last month, which represents a drop of 46 percent from its peak of 3.23 million players back in January this year. Average player count has been falling every month too, having gone from 1.58 million in January to 0.8 million this month. The highest drop-off was in May (20 percent).

PUBG announced just last week it had hit 50 million units sold on PC and Xbox One combined. The game is not available on PS4, which is the more popular console. Meanwhile, PUBG's biggest battle royale competitor, Fortnite, is available on all three: PC, Xbox One, and PS4. On the portable front, PUBG is on Android and iOS, while Fortnite is available on iOS and Nintendo Switch, where it racked up 2 million downloads in less than a day.

Fortnite's success likely contributed to PUBG's fall on PC. The game leads with YouTube viewers, having garnered over 5 billion views in April; and grossed over $300 million in the same month. And while Fortnite arrived on the battle royale scene by following PUBG, it's now the latter that's learning from the former: PUBG copied Fortnite's Battle Pass customisation unlocks on both desktop and mobile last week.

It's possible the declining numbers led PUBG to have its first Steam sale last week as well, though the timing was quite close to Steam's own summer sale.