Steam Reaches 8 Million Concurrent Users, Up from 7.6 Million Six Months Ago

Valve's digital gaming platform Steam continues to grow. Yesterday, June 29, at 11:44 a.m., a total of 8,020,700 people were logged into the service at the same time. That's a record for concurrent usage, up from 7.6 million six months ago. The surge in popularity recently likely had something to do with Steam's ongoing Summer Sale, which sees hefty markdowns on great games.

Currently, Steam has 5.5 million concurrent users. While Valve is known to openly share user data for Steam, platform holders like Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo are less forthcoming about concurrent player levels. This makes it tricky to make a direct comparison between Steam and console online networks like Xbox Live, PlayStation Network, or Nintendo's online services.

The most popular game on Steam right now, based on the current player count, is free-to-play juggernaut Dota 2 with 566,568 people playing the game at present. Dota 2 is by far the top Steam game, as the second most popular game on the platform right now is Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, which has 94,732 total players right now. Of course, Dota 2 is free and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive is a paid game.

In all, Steam has more than 75 million users. More Steam statistics are available on the Steam Stats page.

The annual Steam Summer Sale ends today, June 30. Check back later today to see what our "Pick of the Day" is. You can also check out this post for a roundup of all the games marked down during Steam's Summer Sale.