SteamDB revealed via Twitter that the PC gaming platform hsd surpassed its milestone of 10 million players in-game concurrently. On the same day (January 8), it also broke its record of most online users at once, with the new record being just over 33 million.
Specifically, the concurrent in-game player count peaked at 10,284,568 on Sunday after spiking over 10 million on Saturday. This is the number of players actively gaming at the same time. The concurrent player count — the number of gamers online, even those not gaming — hit 33,078,963 on the same day.
The number of concurrent users on Steam has, according to SteamDB, been rising steadily for the last decade. Player count leapt in numbers around the onset of lockdown during the COVID-19 pandemic. Data from Newzoo released late last year suggests all gaming markets experienced a boon during the last few years. Many of those numbers are diminishing as the market corrects, but it seems Steam is still able to keep its high number of new players.
As for why the player count rose so high, that’s a matter of speculation. Multiplayer titles appear to have high player counts on that day, including Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, Dota 2 and newcomer Goose Goose Duck. It’s also possible that many gamers are keeping New Years resolutions to work through their backlogs — given that Steam is legendary for sales, many players using the service boast gigantic libraries.
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