Steam Just Hit Another All-Time High Peak User Count

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As a seasoned PC gamer with decades of gaming experiences under my belt, I can confidently say that Steam has been the crown jewel of the PC gaming world for many years now. The recent surge in concurrent users, breaking all previous records and reaching an astounding 39 million, is a testament to its enduring popularity and the ever-growing community of gamers who flock to this platform.

Steam has demonstrated yet again that PC gaming is thriving, hitting a new record peak user count of 39,205,447 simultaneous players, and this achievement occurred over a bustling weekend, marked by the successful debuts of Marvel Rivals and Path of Exile II in early access, as well as other releases.

Big Numbers

Over the past two decades, Steam has consistently grown stronger, witnessing a significant surge in user engagement during the COVID-19 pandemic that hasn’t slowed down since. Graphs from SteamDB depict this trend over the last twenty years, painting a picture of continuous growth.

On the graph, the ‘A’ marker signifies the beginning of the COVID-19 outbreak. As a result of government lockdowns, countless gamers worldwide found themselves with more free time on their hands. In response, they turned to gaming and content creation not just for entertainment, but also as a means to earn some income.

That of course warranted a massive growth in the number of PC players around the world.

Over the weekend, the widely recognized PC gaming platform nearly reached 40 million simultaneous users – an impressive figure to say the least. Since the start of 2024, Steam has experienced a significant upward trend, though it’s important to note that certain games contribute significantly more to this success than others.

To put it simply, Counter-Strike 2 consistently has about 1.5 million players online at any given 24-hour period, with PUBG and Dota 2 trailing behind with around 700,000 each. However, this weekend saw a significant surge for Marvel Rivals, attracting nearly half a million players, while Path of Exile II, still in early access, managed an impressive 578,000 concurrent users on its charts.

As a passionate Steam user, I’d like to draw attention to the fact that the figure you see represents our peak concurrent users. This doesn’t necessarily mean that all of these users are actively engaged in a game; instead, they’re merely logged into Steam at the given moment. When we hit the 39 million mark, about 12 million of us were actively playing games at that time.

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2024-12-09 11:17