Despite growing competition in the online videogame marketplace, Valve continues to see the number of concurrent users on Steam grow. The platform set a new, all-time peak earlier today at 27,182,165 users, as spotted by Eurogamer.
This marks Steam’s first time breaking 27 million concurrent users, surpassing the platform’s previous highest mark of 26,922,926 set in March 2021, according to SteamDB.
Over the last 30 days, Steam saw an increase of around 876,238 users, powering its surge to a new record. However, of the 27.1 million users who were using Steam at roughly the same time, only 7.8 million were actively using a program launched from the platform and not just Steam itself. This likely means a lot of users simply signed on to browse the Autumn Sale or have the program boot automatically when they use their PC or laptop.
That 7.8 million total for in-game users is also the closest Valve has come to breaking another all-time peak for the platform, with the current record sitting at 8.1 million users from back in April 2020.
Overall, this peak was largely driven by multiplayer games, such as CS:GO and Dota 2, which recorded 941,571 and 680,734 peak users over the last 24 hours respectively. Likewise, the sustained success of titles like New World, PUBG, Apex Legends, and the recently launched Halo Infinite also provided big boosts, each contributing well over 100,000 users.
Breaking its own concurrent user peak isn’t new for Valve. Steam saw a surge in usage throughout 2020 as more people spent extended time at home during the COVID pandemic, and those boosted numbers haven’t fallen off significantly.
