Steam has been on steam for the past few years. It reached the platform around this time last year 28 million concurrent users (opens in new tab), an increase of three million compared to the previous year. Over the past weekend, SteamDB (opens in new tab) registered that number skyrocketing to a new peak of 33,078,963 players all logged into Steam at the same time.
An increase of four million concurrent users over 12 months is some damn good growth, and it’s not the only record that Valve’s platform shattered this weekend. While the 33 million concurrent users are just for the number of players logged into Steam, Eurogamer (opens in new tab) reports that on January 8, there were also 10,284,586 people actively playing something. It is the first time the platform has surpassed 10 million concurrent active users.
Regular customers such as CS:GO, Apex Legends, Dota 2 and Grand Theft Auto 5 again at the top of the charts (opens in new tab) for what people played during the peak of the platform. But there are also some games that we didn’t see dominating the top spots at this time last year. Amazon’s MMO Lost Ark was in the top 10 games on January 9, along with Wallpaper Engine. The most surprising entry is Among Us like Goose Goose Duck. The game has been out since October 2021, but has gained immense popularity over the last two months a surprisingly similar fashion to the game it’s inspired by (albeit aided by K-pop). (opens in new tab)It even worked surpasses the record of simultaneous players of Among Us (opens in new tab)at the beginning of the year.
Steam has reached 10 million concurrent in-game players for the first time, as well as 32 million concurrent online users today.https://t.co/D6WDHbz0B4 pic.twitter.com/rbRabSCLyeJanuary 7, 2023
I wonder if the difference between last year’s 2021 and 2022 growth has anything to do with the Steam Deck getting all over the place in the past 12 months. Especially with the holiday season behind us and many more people inevitably owning Valve’s handheld, it makes sense to see the competitors as high as they are right now. Steam Decks spent much of the year on backorder, so with the consoles now much more readily available, I’m sure we’ll see even higher numbers in another 12 months.