Steam breaks previous concurrent user record, sets the bar at 22 million

Numbers continue to climb as users pile onto Steam to get some form of escape during the global lockdown due to the coronavirus outbreak, leading to the service hitting another new record concurrent user count. 

Just a week after hitting 20 million concurrent users, Steam is still on the uptrend, breaking 22 million users yesterday with no signs of stopping today. 

Because Steam is the primary game service for most PC gamers, it isn’t a surprise to see not only the platform, but also the games offered through the platform increase their player bases as social distancing continues. CS:GO recently broke one million players for the first time in the game’s nearly 16 years on the market last week, and that number continues to increase by the day too. 

Related: CS:GO hits over one million concurrent players

Other games like Dota 2, Football Manager 2020, and Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege have also seen significant boosts to their numbers during this period of time. 

According to industry analyst Daniel Ahmad, Steam hit 18.5 million users for the first time in January 2018 on the back of PUBG and its massively popular battle royale offering. But it took lockdowns and self-isolations around the world to push the service back to that total this year. 

February was the start of this surge as areas in China and other parts of the world slowly started advocating for self-quarantine in the face of the coronavirus outbreak. This saw a spike in Steam users, pushing the site to 18.8 million concurrent at the start of February. 

By Feb. 9, the number had jumped to 19 million users and only continued to climb into March where the service broke 20 million users for the first time in its history. The 21-million mark was hit two days ago thanks to more lockdowns being announced across Europe and the United States, along with the launch of Doom Eternal. 

At around 9:30am CT, Steam peaked at 22,670,375 active users, with somewhere around 7.2 users actively sitting in-game.

Based on these trends, it is likely that Steam will continue to peak throughout the month as more people are forced to stay home during the coronavirus pandemic that is expected to persist through the first week of April, if not longer.