Previous Steam Record Was Broken in Less Than a Month. The New One Is Over 38 Million Gamers Playing at the Same Time
Steam is rapidly growing in size. Last weekend, more than 38 million players played on Valve's platform simultaneously for the first time.
Update (September 23)
Steam has achieved a new record for the highest number of simultaneous users - 38,367,277. Activity on the platform saw a noticeable increase last weekend, with the end-of-August record being surpassed by 300,000 players. So it's possible that we will soon be able to celebrate another top result.
Original news (August 26)
Over 37 million users simultaneously is a new activity record on Steam. Last weekend, Valve's platform attracted its highest number of players in history (37,266,324 users), beating the previous record by almost a million people in less than 6 months (via SteamDB).
Steam remains the most popular digital distribution platform on PC, despite growing competition. Two additional events could have boosted user activity over the weekend.
The first one is the launch of the warmly received Black Myth Wukong, which attracted an absurd amount of players. Historically, only PUBG can boast better numbers - the game of Game Science studio surpassed the results of such giants as Counter-Strike 2, Baldur’s Gate 3, Palworld, Dota 2, and Cyberpunk 2077. Even now, the Chinese action RPG remains the most popular title on Steam, as well as the most frequently purchased premium game (in theory, BMW overtook Counter-Strike 2, but it is a free-to-play game).
Of course, Black Myth: Wukong is not the only title attracting crowds to Valve's platform. CS 2 still has a huge player base, as do DOTA 2, Naraka: Bladepoint, PUBG, and, of course, the infamous banana game.
The second reason for the record-breaking activity may be gamescom 2024, which also achieved the best results in its history. The opening ceremony was indeed broadcasted on Tuesday, but the event continued until yesterday. Most players play on Steam during weekends, and it's on these days that the platform has broken both the latest and previous records.
