PUBG has played the largest role in revolutionizing the battle royale genre after H1Z1. The developers of the game, Bluehole, had enjoyed massive success with the launch of their title last year. Players from all around the world craved to play the title that had revolutionized the genre. All of the massive hype and attention picked up Microsoft’s attention and managed to land itself on the Xbox One family of consoles as a console exclusive. This was huge for the developers at Bluehole, and considering the amount of support they had, it seemed like the game was unstoppable. It took the first place on Twitch and was trending on both, Twitch and in player counts. During the title’s Early Access days, the player count managed to peak at 3.2 million players as well climb up on Steam’s ranking as the most active title on all of Steam.
Since the inception of Fortnite came along, Bluehole had felt the rise of another strong competitor, a competitor that could possibly dethrone PUBG rankings and hype. Fortnite came like a storm when it was first announced that they are adding a Battle Royale mode to the game back in September 2017. Epic Games offered the battle royale mode of the game for free. PUBG still had a few months of glory left before Epic Games’s Fortnite came in sweeping the charts. By January 2018, PUBG had seen its best moments. In January 2018, PUBG had managed to amass a peak player count of 3.2 million. Since then, PUBG has been losing quite a portion of its player base and has stopped showing any signs of growth.
According to Steam Charts, a well-reputed Steam tracker, the game has lost approximately 788,739 players to date and is expected to continue sliding down the slope. In May 2018, the game lost over 20.86% of its players, that is one average, which is the largest decrease we’ve ever seen for the game yet. These drops could definitely be accredited to the success of Fortnite. The game now amasses over 796,144 players on average. This means that from the month PUBG peaked to the present, the game has lost over 50.23% of its player count.
In contast, this has been the best month for Fortnite. The company revealed that they now have over 125 Million players who play the game. How much of those regularly play Fortnite is a mystery. However, their current player base is seemingly bringing some excellent revenue for the company. As we reported today, Fortnite has managed to generate over US $318 million last month.
These are definitely some of the worst numbers the game has ever seen. However, that isn’t to say that Bluehole is unaware of this. Recently, Bluehole launched a new map called Sanhok for PUBG. A much smaller map that brings action packed close quarter combat to its players. The continuous support from its current player base and feedback should allow Bluehole to keep the game relevant to many players. Given that Sanhok is now the third map available for all of its players, I’ll be interested to see how next month fares for the game.
These are definitely some booming times for the genre as a whole indeed.
