[Discussion] Steam Reaches New Milestone with 10 Million Concurrent Players Gaming Simultaneously

[Uncrowned Guard]

Over the weekend, Steam, the popular PC gaming marketplace and community, hit a new milestone of 10 million concurrent players all playing video games at the same time. This is a significant achievement, as it means that 10 million people were actively engaged in gaming, rather than just idling in the browser or storefront.

Steam began tracking in-game concurrent users in 2017, and the last big spike under this measure occurred on March 30, 2020, as the COVID-19 pandemic was driving everyone indoors. The number of players dropped off as life returned to normal, but came back to hit a high of 9.2 million concurrent in-game players over the Valentine’s Day weekend in 2022.

Additionally, Steam notched 32 million concurrent online users, not necessarily in a game, on Thursday, which is also a record. The most popular games among the players were Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, Dota 2, PUBG: Battlegrounds, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, and Apex Legends.

This milestone is a testament to the continued growth of Steam's user base, which is likely helped by the release of the handheld Steam Deck, which is about to celebrate its one-year anniversary. Steam itself will turn 20 years old in September of this year, making it a long-standing and well-established platform in the gaming industry.

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[Pilleus]

I do wonder how many players are new to PC gaming and steam and only just now got in because of the steam deck.

[Uncrowned Guard]

9 minutes ago, Pilleus said:

I do wonder how many players are new to PC gaming and steam and only just now got in because of the steam deck.

Sadly I do not think those stats exist directly, however SteamOS appears to still be around 1% of Steam users via Steam's hardware survey and it sounds like that should include Steam Deck users.  So you can estimate that the Steam Deck added around 100k players, BUT no idea how many are new.

[Heatman]

When you talk about the sector which benefited so much from the pandemic of coronavirus and the lockdown, gaming industry is in the top 3 list. This achievement which Steam just aced is a perfect example of that effect. Imagine 10 million gamers active in their server, that's incredible.