Steam Passes 28 Million Concurrent Users, Setting New Record

Valve's PC store and platform Steam has set a new concurrent player record. The platform exceeded 28 million concurrent users today, January 9, to set a new all-time high. The numbers were disclosed on Steam's public statistics page. The new record is 28,230,661.

Analyst Daniel Ahmad observed that Steam saw "strong growth" for concurrent users in 2020 due to the pandemic. This growth has only continued since then. Steam reached 27.9 million concurrent players earlier in January, so it was only a matter of time before the service cracked 28 million officially--and now it has.

In terms of Steam's most popular games by player count, Valve's own Counter-Strike: Global Offensive topped the charts for January 9, with a peak of 881,051 players. Another Valve game, Dota 2, followed with a peak of 748,270 players. The rest of the top five included PUBG (351,766), Apex Legends (237,441), and Grand Theft Auto V (152,326).

Steam is massively popular, but some publishers are moving away from it. Ubisoft, for example, no longer releases its games on Steam due in part to Valve's business model. Ubisoft's Chris Early spoke out against Steam, saying its business model is "unrealistic." He added, "It doesn't reflect where the world is today in terms of game distribution."