The number of people playing battle royale behemoth Playerunknown's Battlegrounds has dropped by roughly 30 per cent since the game's peak in January.

That's according to data from Steam Charts, which records the title's peak player counter as 3,236,027 - which occurred in January. The figure for the peak players in the last 30 days comes in a 2,175,704, a dip of 32.8 per cent.

When looking at the average player figures for the same time frame, that drop is higher - 40 per cent from 1,584,886 to 949,763.

There are likely a number of factors in the game's drop-off - the rise in popularity of Fortnite will certainly be responsible for some of this erosion. Not only is that game free-to-play, it is also benefiting from a number of events, such as one that included Avengers Infinity War big bad Thanos. The project has also been played by Twitch's biggest streamer, Ninja.

PUBG Corp's war on cheaters in the game will also be behind some of this dip. Fair play to the studio - and Chinese publishing partner Tencent - it has tried really hard to try and curb bad actors within the battle royale giant, but players frustrated with their game being ended by users employing aimbots and other such exploits are likely to just leave the game.

It is also possible that the title's Chinese audience - roughly half of PUBG players earlier this year - are holding off and waiting for an official version to come out via Tencent. 

And finally, there's simply the fact that Playerunknown's Battlegrounds experienced *such* a rise that there was no way that the title would ever remain at the lofty heights of success it reached. But then again, no game can retain a concurrent player figure of three million people, if we're being honest.