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PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds breaks 500,000 concurrent players on Steam

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A hotfix to address recent server lag issues has also been released.

It's no secret that five million. And earlier today it set another big milestone by breaking 500,000 concurrent players on Steam.

Today's peak actually climbed even higher, to a total of 523,436, before slipping to a little under 430,000 at the time of writing. That rapid climb up the ranks makes me wonder if Dota 2's position at the top of the heap is as unassailable as it seems to be. PUBG may be struggling to work out some issues with disaffected players, some of them came out today, so what do I know?

PUBG recently rolled out first-person-only servers, and it sounds like that could help push the game to even greater heights: "An arguably minor change [that] has made Battlegrounds a more tense, more rewarding game overnight," as we put it on our analysis of the new POV. That update apparently caused server lag issues for some players, but a hotfix has since been rolled out that should clear up the problem.

Andy Chalk
Andy Chalk
US News Lead

Andy has been gaming on PCs from the very beginning, starting as a youngster with text adventures and primitive action games on a cassette-based TRS80. From there he graduated to the glory days of Sierra Online adventures and Microprose sims, ran a local BBS, learned how to build PCs, and developed a longstanding love of RPGs, immersive sims, and shooters. He began writing videogame news in 2007 for The Escapist and somehow managed to avoid getting fired until 2014, when he ed the storied ranks of PC Gamer. He covers all aspects of the industry, from new game announcements and patch notes to legal disputes, Twitch beefs, esports, and Henry Cavill. Lots of Henry Cavill.