Battlegrounds received “generally favorable reviews” on all platforms, with the exception of the PlayStation 4 version which received “mixed or average reviews”, according to review aggregator website Metacritic. During both its early access phase and after, the game also surpassed numerous player-count records. Bluehole released statistics for the first four months of release that showed that over ten million rounds of Battlegrounds had been played, effectively equal to more than 25,000 man-years of time. Data by SteamSpy showed that Battlegrounds had surpassed long-standing popular titles in concurrent player count on Steam, such as Fallout 4 and Grand Theft Auto V, eventually overtaking Dota 2, the most played game on the platform for years, in August 2017. The following month, the game had its peak concurrent player count reach over 1.3 million, surpassing Dota 2‘s all-time record of 1.29 set in March 2016. The game then reached a concurrent player count of two million in October 2017, and three million by the end of the year. The game has also been shown popular in South Korean PC bangs; analysis firm Gametrics reported that Battlegrounds had surpassed Overwatchand became the second-most played game in the country by August 2017, only behind League of Legends,it subsequently surpassed League of Legends by October 2017. Battlegrounds‘ popularity in China led to a large increase in users of Steam from there, with more than half of Steam clients having Chinese as their default language in late 2017.
