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More than 400m people have played Playerunknown's Battlegrounds

More than 400m people have played Playerunknown's Battlegrounds

Battle royale behemoth Playerunknown's Battlegrounds has hit yet another big milestone.

Developer and publisher PUBG Corp has revealed that the title has been played by more than 400m people from around the world. that's across all platforms, including the free-to-play mobile editions. Additionally, 227m people play the game each and every month, PUBG drawing a crowd of 87m players each and every single day.

Speaking purely about the premium versions of the game - the PC and Xbox One SKUs - there have been more than 50m unit sales. The title hit 30m copies in December 2017, meaning that sales have slowed down to 3.33m copies sold per month on average. On average last year, the game was selling 1.3m copies each and every week, or 5.2m each month; something that there was no way the battle royale giant could sustain.

That's a dip of almost 40 per cent, slightly higher than the dip in concurrent players

Sales of the game have slowed down, especially in China, with some saying that consumers are waiting for a Tencent version on PC to hit digital storefronts. Concurrent player figures have also dipped. There are a number of theories as to why this is happening, though the rise of Fortnite is surely a factor. Additionally, PUBG Corp's struggle to deal with the massive number of cheaters in the game has been a point of frustration for many users.

To celebrate the game's success, Playerunknown's Battlegrounds is 33 per cent off on Steam until July 5th. That's such a big deal that Valve issued a press release.

No doubt PUBG will back on top in the Steam Top Ten next week, then, having recently been deposed by Frontier Development's Jurassic World Evolution.


PCGamesInsider Contributing Editor

Alex Calvin is a freelance journalist who writes about the business of games. He started out at UK trade paper MCV in 2013 and left as deputy editor over three years later. In June 2017, he joined Steel Media as the editor for new site PCGamesInsider.biz. In October 2019 he left this full-time position at the company but still contributes to the site on a daily basis. He has also written for GamesIndustry.biz, VGC, Games London, The Observer/Guardian and Esquire UK.