PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds Blows Past Dota 2 As Most Played Game On Steam

Everyone seems to be playing PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds, or PUBG as the cool kids spell it. And by "everyone," we do not mean that literally, of course, but that does not take anything away from the game's popularity. The battle royale shooter has now leapfrogged ahead of Dota 2 on Steam's concurrent player chart, hitting a peak of 877,844 gamers all logged in at the same time.

That feat pushed Dota 2 down to second place with a peak of 842,919 concurrent players, the only other game that comes close to the number of players PUGB is enjoying.
After that, Counter Strike: Global Offensive (CS:GO), which PUBG forged ahead of a few weeks ago, is in a distant third with a peak of 560,877. Grand Theft Auto V is the only other game with its player count topping 100,000 with a peak of 104,533, a testament to Rockstar Games continuing to paying attention to the title with updates four years after it was released.

But this is about PUBG, not GTA V. PUBG is an Early Access game on Steam on it is proving insanely popular, probably more so than developer Bluehole Studios and publisher Microsoft Studios could have anticipated. Players seem to be drawn to the game's simple premise—be the last person standing.
Topping Dota 2 in concurrent users is nice for bragging rights, though it might not last. At any given time, Dota 2 is prone is topping 1 million players logged in. But regardless of that all shakes out, what is ultimately important is sales, and on that front an analysts digging through NPD data made the claim that PUBG is the best selling game on any single platform (units sold). That is an impressive feat.

If you haven't played PUBG, you start the game with nothing in a vast 8km x 8km island built with the Unreal Engine 4. You must fight with other players to locate weapons and supplies, and ultimately be the last one to survive. The high level of detail combined with the tension of trying to be the last person standing combine to make PUBG a compelling game experience.