Neslyn A. February 6, 2019
Dota 2 is back on top, at least as far as player counts on Steam are concerned.
Dota 2 has surpassed the popular battle royale game PLAYERUNKNOWN’S BATTLEGROUNDS in the Steam’s top games chart when sorted by current players.
The recent release of the 7.21 patch and the popularity of a new custom game mode Auto Chess took Dota 2 back to the number one spot in number of concurrent players. For the last 30 days, Dota 2 peaked at 912,378 players, which is the game’s highest player count since a dip in July 2017.
Surprisingly, the July 2017 dip was during the Siltbreaker events made exclusively for The International 2017 Battle Pass owners. Most participating players enjoyed the event, but found that the campaign has an inadequate reward system given the time commitment required.
The game’s accessibility being limited to Battle Pass owners also played a role n the shrinking number of people attracted to the game. Many previous events had been open to all player, including Nemesis Assassin, Frostivus, and Dark Moon.
The last time Dota 2 reached more than one million concurrent players was in February 2017. This was during the Dark Moon event, which was accessible to all players. In the event’s special game mode, five players would try to defend Selemene’s Temple from waves of enemies that spawned from four different lanes.
In February 2015, Dota 2 reached its record for the highest number of concurrent players with a peak of 1,291,328. The game has yet to break that record, but returning to seven figures looks like an increasing possibility.
PLAYERUNKNOWN’S BATTLEGROUNDS remains at the top spot in all-time concurrent player records with a peak 3,236,027 player count in January 2018.