Battle Royale Games Continue to Gain Attention

For June’s deep dive into our PC Game Tracker, we’re turning the spotlight on Hi-Rez Studios’ free-to-play Realm Royale, a new entry to our Top 20 Most Popular Core PC Games Ranking.

With Realm Royale, Hi-Rez Studios – the developer behind Smite and Paladins – is looking to capitalize on the meteoric rise of the battle royale genre. The game is similar to other titles in the genre, featuring 100-person last-player-standing matches in which combatants must collect different weapons and abilities from chests throughout the game’s map.

Just like Fortnite’s building mechanics, there are gameplay elements in Realm Royale that help it stand out from other games in the genre: it takes place in a fantasy setting, MOBA-style mounts can be activated to get around the map quicker, and there’s a class-based system that lets players choose between five different play styles. Interestingly, the game started development as Paladins Battlegrounds in January, but Hi-Rez decided to release the game as a standalone title after its short alpha release in Paladins.

Realm Royale was an overnight hit; it entered the June ranking at #12 and was played by 3.6% of all players throughout the month. Following the game’s release on Steam Early Access on June 5, it peaked at more than 100,000 concurrent players and was broadcast by superstar streamers such as Ninja, which likely helped fuel the title’s popularity.

A Spike in Players of Hi-Rez Games

Realm Royale’s initial success helped Hi-Rez Studios jump to #11 in our publisher ranking for June, up from its #19 ranking in May. In fact, 5% of all core PC players played a Hi-Rez game in June, compared to 2.1% and 1.7% in May and April, respectively. The title was also the most played Hi-Rez game globally for players; of all the people who played Hi-Rez core PC games in June, 71.5% played Realm Royale, 23.4% played Paladins, and 14.6% played Smite.

On a country level, the game was most popular with people in the Nordics; it was played by 6.2% of Denmark’s players, 6.1% of Sweden’s players, and 5.9% of Norway’s players – compared to the 3.6% of people who played it worldwide.

Realm Royale Popular with U.S. Fans of Hi-Rez and Other Battle Royale Games

Many U.S.-based players of other battle royale games in previous months moved on to Realm Royale in June, including 21.2% of those who stopped playing H1Z1: King of the Kill, 9.7% of those who stopped playing PUBG, and 8.8% of those who stopped playing Fortnite. Also, the average session time for Realm Royale was 47 minutes, which was significantly less time than Fortnite’s average of 86 minutes. Many players in the U.S. also churned from Hi-Rez’s older titles to Realm Royale, including 15.2% of lapsed Paladins players and 13.7% of lapsed Smite players.

Naturally, many North Americans who played other Hi-Rez games in June also played Realm Royale. Twenty-nine percent of Paladins players and 23.6% of Smite players played Realm Royale, which is unsurprising, given the visible ads for Realm Royale in these other Hi-Rez titles and the fact that the game was originally planned as an add-on for Paladins. What’s more, U.S. players of other battle royale games in June played Realm Royale too, including players of H1Z1: King of the Kill (23.6%), PUBG (14.5%), and Fortnite (13.1%). Interestingly, 11.6% of North American Overwatch players also checked out Realm Royale in June.

Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft was #2 Most Played Core PC Game

In the Top 20 Most Popular Core PC Games, Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft climbed to #2 – up two places from last month, which may be due to game’s 11.2 update, which was released on June 5 and added a variety of new features, bug fixes, and gameplay improvements. Also, Fortnite dropped to #4, down from #2 in May, while PUBG held on to its #3 spot. PUBG’s strong position in June could be a result of the game’s highly anticipated Sanhok map, which launched on June 22.

Blizzard’s Diablo III experienced the greatest rise at #17, climbing nine places from the previous month. A new addition to June’s top 20 was Bethesda’s Fallout 4, which can perhaps be attributed to the buzz created around the franchise’s next game, Fallout 76, at E3.

The PC Game Tracker

Newzoo’s PC Game Tracker offers an in-depth, monthly overview of more than 3,000 games and 100 publishers across 42 countries. The tracker allows clients to easily identify and track the key markets for each game, publisher, and genre, and to gain a deep understanding of player behavior with metrics such as play time, session time, and cross-over engagement/churn with other games. The data is derived from Overwolf’s user base of 12 million PC gaming enthusiasts and can be easily sliced and diced in multiple ways using our new Tableau-powered dashboard.