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PUBG Hits 30 Million In Sales, But PC Player Base Experiences First Drops
PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds underwent an explosion of sales and player base growth late last year, and the fruits of that have come to bear with the groundbreaking hit reaching 30 million sales this past week on Steam, which isn't including the sales generated from over 4 million players on Xbox One. However, the major milestone is met with the inevitable point of the PC player base seeming to have peaked – or declined, even – as SteamDB stats indicate. Since late January, there have several million less active players populating the game's servers on your average day.
PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds received its official 1.0 release out of Early Access in December prior to the game's early access release on Xbox One. You can check out our review of the 1.0 release on PC here.
[Source: SteamDB, Yuji Nakamura on Twitter via IGN]
Our Take
The implementation of an "anti-cheat update" that banned over 1 million players at once certainly could be having an impact with ongoing use of the ban hammer, but another factor could be well-meaning players being burned out by the increasingly worrisome presence of hackers. With Fortnite boasting a higher player count and average base, the developer has its work cut out to further protect its community so they can play without fear of chicken dinners being won fair and square.
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