Steam sets concurrent user record of over 30m online for the first time ever cover image

Steam sets concurrent user record of over 30m online for the first time ever

Steam broke the record by more than 2 million users, a sign that the platform shows no signs of slowing down.

Steam has broken its record for simultaneous users on the app, beating the previous best by nearly 2m. Steam previously beat the record as recently as January 2022. This is according to data collected by SteamDB.

This means that for the first time in Steam's history, more than 30 million people had the app open on their PC, laptop or phone at the same time. Even with that many users on the platform, just 8.5 million of them were actually playing a game.

Steam's rise in the last few years has been astronomical. Even with the platform being operational since 2004, the recent adaptation of PC gaming has done wonders for them.

Concurrent users surpassed 30m at 2 pm UTC (9 am EST). Screenshot via SteamDB.
Concurrent users surpassed 30m at 2 pm UTC (9 am EST). Screenshot via SteamDB.

In 2020, they set a then-record of concurrent users at a total of 19 million. In just two years they have added an extra 11 million to that number.

The games that are most responsible for holding users on the platform as it broke the record this time were CS:GO, Dota 2, Player Unknowns Battlegrounds, Apex Legends and Lost Ark.

CS:GO made up over a million of the users that were online when Steam broke their record for concurrent users.

The last time that steam broke their user record was in January. On that occasion, 27.94 million people were on the app.

Dota 2 usually holds around 600,000 concurrent players throughout the day but with TI11 currently happening, there is naturally more interest in the game. Dota 2's concurrent playerbase spiked up to 752,700 when Steam broke its record.

A new Steam user record, but what does this mean?

This record is yet another sign that PC gaming really is taking over the gaming landscape. The rise of Steam is parallel to the rise of PC systems. At the start of 2022, a report by the NPD Group showed that PC gaming had seen a 25% growth in revenue in just 12 months.

That report also showed that people had spent more time gaming on their systems per week on average. Users spend 7.7 hours gaming on their systems on average each week.

Image via Steam.
Image via Steam.

It is likely that these numbers will continue to grow. With the PC gaming landscape continually expanding, the reliance on Steam as a platform will be more and more prevalent.

Even with competitors that have established themselves in the last few years, with the Epic Games store and Activision-Blizzard and EA having their own apps, Steam still provides the most wide-reaching library of games.

Steam will only see more success in the coming months with Activision-Blizzard putting Call of Duty back on the platform. The last time Call of Duty was available on steam was in 2017. Each time that a CoD game has released on Steam, it has topped the Steam chart for at least a week. Modern Warfare 2 is expected to be no different.

It's been a fantastically successful year for Valve and for Steam. Breaking the Steam user record again for the second time really puts the cherry on top of what has been a really stellar 2022 for the company in terms of face value success.