Steam once again broke its own record of simultaneous players, with more than 26 million people connected at the same time. As reported by PC Gamer, Valve’s digital distribution service reached a historic record over the weekend, managing 26.4 million users connected to Domigo. It only broke the previous record last month, with 25.4 million people online at the same time. The increase is undoubtedly driven by blocking measures underway around the world that drive more people to play at home.
Stalwart Steam games like Counter-Strike, Dota and PUBG are consistently boosting the platform’s numbers, but this recent boost was undoubtedly aided by the Chinese role-playing game Tale of Immortal, which launched in late January and ranks fourth at the top of the service 10
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Contemporary success stories like Rust, Valheim, Between Us and Phasmophobia also certainly had a role to play in increasing Steam numbers. Valheim in particular was the top seller last week, breaking 130,000 simultaneous players in less than a week.
The growth has been phenomenal since March 2020, when Steam’s simultaneous record was hovering around the 20 million mark. Compare that to December 2020, when it reached 24 million simultaneous users with the release of Cyberpunk 2077. At the same time, Steam broke a separate record when more than 1 million players flooded Cyberpunk hours after its release, doubling Fallout 4 2015 record of almost 500 thousand users.
Our 2013 news article, when Steam broke 7 million simultaneous users, is a pretty humble comparison now. It is a good omen for Valve that Steam has finally officially launched in China – although this has not been the easiest process, and it may continue to be difficult for Chinese players after concerns about lost games have emerged. In other Steam news, the service was recently fined by the European Union for alleged geographic blocking.
