The battle royale classic Playerunknown’s Battlegrounds is not doing well at the moment. The game is steadily losing players and those remaining are dissatisfied. Even the biggest streamer on Twitch has had enough. He is now waiting for the battle royale from Call of Duty: Modern Warfare.
Who is the streamer? chocoTaco is the current largest PUBG streamer on Twitch by viewer hours (via sullygnome). He has been streaming the battle royale since April 2017, shortly after the release of PUBG.
He has made a name for himself with the game and has grown with it. PUBG accounted for most of his streaming time last year, as the corresponding graphic shows:
However, it seems he has lost interest. In a tweet, he writes among other things:
“PUBG is a mess. A bunch of people still can’t play without constant packet loss and lag. It’s hard to enjoy the game. Whenever the battle royale from CoD comes out, I’m taking a break from PUBG.”
Players are leaving PUBG
What’s the status of PUBG? Since January 2018, player numbers for PUBG on Steam have been consistently declining (via steamcharts). At that time, the game still managed to captivate over 1.5 million players on average. Today, there are only 258,684 left.
The recently blooming interest in PUBG in China due to coronaviruslikely isn’t helping, although there it is rather the mobile version that is popular.
Other games, especially in the shooter sector, are currently seeing significant increases. For instance, the tactical shooter Rainbow Six: Siege has reached a new record on Steam. The potential is certainly there.
In the streaming area, PUBG is also significantly declining. In the last 365 days, PUBG has lost
- 43% of its viewer hours and average viewers
- 33.8% of its broadcast time and average channels
- 43.4% of its streamers
- and 53.2% of its peak viewers (via sullygnome).
The graph from chocoTaco also clearly shows that PUBG is no longer drawing in viewers like it used to. On average, he now reaches only a few more viewers than with Guitar Hero, competitor Ring of Elysium, or Mortal Kombat.
This is what the players are saying: There is dissatisfaction within the community. Players are complaining about a multitude of bugs that continually find their way into the game and that the developers seem to neglect.
They are frustrated that while more content is being released, nothing is done about the persistent bugs. These just keep increasing. The current largest thread in the PUBG subreddit even has a bold “Fuck you, Bluehole” in the title.
Many players are now waiting for the upcoming battle royale mode “Warzone” from Call of Duty: Modern Warfare due to the many bugs. Many players are placing their hopes in the new mode of the shooter. When it will be released is still unknown:
