Dota 2 has reached over 1 million concurrent players — its first time since February 2017 — to reclaim its spot as the most played game on Steam.

Dota 2’s player count has been on the rise since the year started. According to SteamCharts, the game peaked at over 874,000 players in January and at just under 965,000 players in February.

Dota 2 has now ousted PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds (PUBG) from Steam’s top spot, as the battle royale game peaked at just over 931 thousand players in February per SteamCharts. PUBG has been bleeding players since its all-time peak of over 3.2 million players on Steam in January 2018 — largely because of the popularity of rival battle royale titles such as Fortnite: Battle Royale and the recently-released Apex Legends.

Dota 2’s rising player numbers can also be attributed to the quiet success of the Dota Auto Chess mod. The popular custom game mode has more than 5.2 million subscribers — with a peak concurrent player count of more than 140,000 players — with Dota 2 developer Valve Corporation reportedly looking to acquire the mod to help it become a fully-developed title.

Dota 2’s professional scene remains healthy as well, with successful tournaments in ESL One Katowice and MDL Macau in February. March is also looking to be a busy month for the game’s competitive scene, with DreamLeague Season 11, StarLadder Minor, and WESG coming up.

What would most likely lead to even more players for Dota 2 is the impending release of its newest hero — Mars. During the release of the 7.21 balance update back in January, Valve said that they are looking to release the newest hero by early March.

We can expect Mars to come out by next week, that is if the calendar for his release is not on the notorious “Valve time“. In any case, Dota 2’s already rising player numbers seem set to go up even more soon.