2021 was an excellent year for Steam as the PC gaming storefront broke its concurrent user record by gaining a massive 24.7 million user peak on November 28, with 7.8 million of those users currently in-game.
It wasn’t the first instance of Steam breaking the record in 2021, and it seems it wouldn’t be a long-lasting record, either, as they have once again broken the Steam concurrent user record as of January 2, 2022.
At around 9:50 AM ET on Sunday, January 2, Steam saw a peak of exactly 27,942,458 concurrent users on the platform. That would break the previous 27.4 million record by over 500,000 users. It also leaves a benchmark that would seem almost impossible to overcome if Valve had not managed to do it several times in the past few years. So, it won’t be shocking to see Steam cross the 28 million mark within a month.
The top games for the day are also a list of the usual suspects for any familiar Steam user. The most played game of the day was Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, with a peak of 867,147 players. It is followed by DOTA 2 with a peak of 340398,107 concurrent players.
Then comes PUBG Battlegrounds with nearly 350,000 concurrent players and Apex Legends with 221,000 players. Rounding out the rest of the list was Grand Theft Auto 5, Naraka: Bladepoint, Team Fortress 2, New World, Rust, and ARK: Survival Evolved.
No specific significant event or otherwise seems to have prompted this player growth for Steam. The Steam Winter Sale is on currently and will last until January 5, so people may be on the platform even more as they buy and test out new games at stellar prices.
Weekends also see a more significant influx of players as compared to weekdays. The number was most likely in conjunction with the weekend, the holiday season, and the growing number of PC gamers globally.
The breaking of this record further solidifies Steam’s position, for the foreseeable future, as the home of gaming on personal computers. Even though the Epic Game Store is growing and Xbox’s Game Pass on PC’s popularity is rising, Steam holds the crown for the preferred storefront.
About Valve Software
Valve Corporation, also known as Valve Software, is an American video game developer, publisher, and digital distribution company based in Bellevue, Washington. Valve is best known for the software distribution platform Steam, along with gaming franchises such as Half-Life, Counter-Strike, Portal, Day of Defeat, Team Fortress, Left 4 Dead, and Dota.
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