PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds sells 1 million units on Steam

The team behind PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds says it has sold one million copies of that game in its first 16 days on Steam Early Access.

Battlegrounds, an online multiplayer survival game, got off to a quick start by earning a reported $11 million in its first three days. The game is currently the number one best selling game according to Steam, and has been among the top five most-played games on that platform since its launch according to Steamcharts. Data from Steam Spy, which lags about three days behind actual sales, appears to confirm those numbers.

Many have compared Battlegrounds success to another online survival game, DayZ. But when Bohemia Interactive’s standalone version launched in December of 2013 it took that game roughly four weeks to hit the one million mark. That means Battlegrounds is selling roughly twice as fast.

Most impressive is how quickly it’s been adopted by major streamers on Twitch. The game is currently the third most popular game being broadcast there, behind Hearthstone and League of Legends.

Battlegrounds began life as a mod called Battle Royale for the Arma series of military simulation games. The designer, Brendan “PlayerUnknown” Greene, also consulted with the team at Daybreak to create a Battle Royale mode for zombie survival game H1Z1, which eventually spun off into its own standalone game called H1Z1: King of the Kill. Then, just one year ago, Greene partnered with south Korean developer Bluehole to build Battlegrounds.

Bluehole has promised the game will be in Early Access for no more than six months.