PUBG tops Steam charts once again, and here’s why

Popular Battle Royale game PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds saw a much-needed increase in the number of concurrent players, which had been dropping since the beginning of this year, with the launch of one of the biggest updates of the game so far motivating many to return to the battleground again

As the end of the year approaches, we look back at a year full of controversial choices from the development team. The update of the snowy Vikendi map appeared to be the refreshing (and cold) breath of fresh air that was needed by the players. We’re talking about update #24, which came with the anticipated map pushing PUBG to climb back to the top of Steam mountain with more than 1 million concurrent players for the first time since January.

Despite the launch of the first-ever PUBG Global Invitational world championship and the launch of the immensely popular PUBG Mobile for smartphones, the base version of the home and PC platforms suffered from a large number of bugs and missteps that made 10% of players a month leave the game on a steady pace, Down to less than 300,000 registered in November. A combination of technical errors and a lack of new content has been enough to make players bored with the game, especially when compared to its traditional rival, Fortnite, which continued to invest in its successes to reach incredible numbers today.

All hope was not lost for PUBG, with the successful launch of the PS4 version as well as the large #24 update, interest appears to be slowly returning. The new Vikendi map has been seen by many as the best to be released yet with a large list of interesting areas carefully designed to give the most authentic experience of a frosty landscape, while the improved and refined parachute system makes for a nice quality of life improvement that players were asking for. Add to that some fixes to many popular bugs and the improved network performance of the game, with new content of weapons, vehicles and Emotes, and you have a number of reasons to make the owners of the game come back to try the game again.

The responsibility of keeping the game on top lays in the hands of the developers at PUBG Corp now. If they want to continue with the same momentum in 2019, they definitely must provide more updates like this and continue to improve the game and add new content to it, especially with the introduction of CS: GO fierce competition after adding its own Battle Royale and becoming free to play bringing a number of new players reaching more than 600k concurrent players

The new update # 24 is available for download on Steam, coming within weeks to both Xbox One and PS4.