Is PUBG Dying?

Is PUBG dying? PUBG has always had high expectations. Those excited about the game quickly viewed it as a potential esport amongst the gaming community. Fast forward four years later, and now we are questioning the mortality of this once-promising title. 

PUBG has struggled to find success in the competitive scene and even amongst those who casually play the game. Unfortunately, the game’s hold on the Battle-Royale community did not last long. Titles like Fortnite, Call of Duty Warzone and Apex Legends have completely dominated the market, causing a severe plummet in PUBG’s player count.  

A game that once peaked out at over 3.5 million concurrent players is barely scraping by with a below-average 230,000 player count. Sadly, PUBG Corp has had to implement bots to fill their lobbies across multiple platforms due to a lack of players. This begs the question if there is any possibility for PUBG to make a comeback, or is this end of the game thought once to be really promising?

From March 2017 up until January of 2018, PUBG saw consistent growth in its player count, starting at 17,000 players to peaking out at 3.2 million players by the turn of the new year. It seemed like it would be safe to conclude, with that level of production, PUBG was on its way to having a meteoric run as we have seen from Fortnite, Apex Legends and Warzone. That did not turn out to be the case for PUBG.

Over the next two years, the game would see a gradual decline in player count. After January of 2019, PUBG would not see another peak of over one million. In the last six months, the game has not been able to reach half a million averaging 200,000 players usually. 

Not sure if PUBG is dying, but it has gotten lost in the shuffle of the other high profile battle-royale games. Warzone and Fortnite have completely dominated the genre, with Apex having a very stable player count. Another issue that possibly led to the downfall of such a promising title was that PUBG’s content creators moved on to other games.

The most popular faces in streaming are not spending much time playing PUBG, and fans tend to spend playing the games that their favorite streamers are playing. PUBG is a part of a competitive video game genre, and if the title fails to stand out, it will quickly lose players to other games.

PUBG was the game that trail-blazed the phenomenon that is the battle royale genre. With all due respect to H1Z1 being the pioneer of the genre, it did not have its successors’ run. PUBG has seen a loss in the number of loyal players the game gets, but luckily it is not dead. 

PUBG has still been able to grab a bulk of its players on Steam and Xbox Live, which tells us that there are still players out there who have not given up on the game. 

Since its hot start, PUBG has found its way on many different platforms, even having the title of highest concurrent player count on Steam back in 2018. Updates come often to weed out any bugs. PUBG has a loyal base of players throughout Steam and Xbox Live, including a PUBG Lite for IOS. Despite all of this, PUBG is still evolving with the addition of new maps, survivor passes, and other game modes.

In PUBG’s latest update, 11.2, we can expect several new improvements to the game. Survivor passes will no longer be tied to every season of the game. This would help players gain rewards that they may miss because they did not complete the pass in time.

Also, in 11.2, a six-week event allows the players to earn various pajama party cosmetics. In addition, Miramar’s infamous Bridge, has received an update to make it feel less ominious.

Finally, the reputation system has also been improved to stop players from being reported by grieving enemy squads. PUBG is dying but will never be totally dead. It has definitely seen better days, but the developers are constantly adapting their game to keep it competitive.

Will the game ever reach the heights of Fortnite and Warzone? That is not too likely, but we could see a rise in player count pending the latest updated results.