Steam once again broke its own simultaneous player record, with more than 26 million people logged in simultaneously. As reported by PC Gamer, Valve’s digital distribution service peaked over the weekend, managing 26.4 million logged-in users on Sunday. It only set the previous record last month, with 25.4 million people online at one time. The rise is undoubtedly driven by ongoing closure measures around the world that are pushing more people home.
Stalwart Steam games like Counter-Strike, Dota and PUBG continue to drive the platform’s numbers throughout, but the recent pressure has undoubtedly been helped by the Chinese RPG Languages of Immortal launched in late January and in fourth place at the top of the service sits. 10.
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Contemporary success stories like Rust, Valheim, Among Us and Fasmophobia have certainly also played a role in increasing Steam’s numbers. Valheim in particular was last week’s bestseller, beating 130,000 players at a time in less than a week.
The growth has been pretty phenomenal since March 2020, when Steam’s simultaneous record hovered around the 20 million mark. Compare that to December 2020, when it broke up to 24 million concurrent users with the launch of Cyberpunk 2077. At the same time, Steam broke a separate record as more than 1 million players streamed into Cyberpunk within hours of the launch, which doubled Fallout 4s. 2015 record of nearly 500 thousand users.
Our 2013 news article, since Steam broke 7 million concurrent users, now makes the modest comparison. This bodes well for Valve that Steam has finally been officially launched in China – although it has not yet been the smoothest process, and that it will still be difficult for Chinese players after concerns about lost games arose. In other Steam news, the service was recently fined by the European Union for alleged Geo-blocking.
