PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds beats GTA V’s peak Steam players record

The last-player-standing shooter PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds isn’t just a breakout Early Access hit on Steam — it’s one of that PC gaming community’s most popular games ever. On Saturday, July 15, Battlegrounds hit 382,779 simultaneous players on Steam, which is a new record high for the game. That number is also the fourth highest for peak concurrent players in the history of Steam, which puts it ahead of Grand Theft Auto V‘s all-time high of 360,762 from its launch on PC in April 2015. GTA V is one of the best-selling games ever made, and it continues to sell well due to rereleases and its GTA Online service.

Only Dota 2, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, and Fallout 4 have ever had more people playing at one time than PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds. Valve, which owns and operates Steam, also develops the multiplayer online battle arena Dota 2 and the military shooter Counter-Strike. Those games will likely continue to hold their positions at the top for a while, with nearly 1.3 million peak concurrents for Dota 2 and 850,000 for Counter-Strike. Developer Bluehole’s intense shooter could potentially surpass Bethesda’s sci-fi role-playing game Fallout 4, which set a record for non-Steam games with 471,955 simultaneous players during its launch month of November 2015.