Steam's Most-Played Games of 2016 Revealed - Report

We already know the top-grossing games on Steam in 2016, but which games were played the most? GitHyp, which tracks the service's most-played games, has published its report for 2016 (via Kotaku), revealing that Valve games were the most popular on the platform and no game released in 2016 cracked the top five.

When looking at the number of players per hour, Valve's free-to-play DOTA 2 was No. 1, picking up a reported 636,607 average players per hour during 2016. Rounding out the top five for the year were Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (360,600), Team Fortress 2 (50,802), Grand Theft Auto V (40,258), and Civilization V (37,885). You can see the full Top 5 chart below, which includes comparisons to 2015.

Average Players Per Hour for Steam Games in 2016:

1. Dota 2 / 636,607 avg. players per hour (#1 in 2015)
2. Counter-Strike: Global Offensive / 360,600 avg. players per hour (#2 in 2015)
3. Team Fortress 2 / 50,802 avg. players per hour (#4 in 2015)
4. Grand Theft Auto V / 40,258 avg. players per hour (#5 in 2015)
5. Sid Meier's Civilization V / 37,885 avg players per hour (#9 in 2015)

Additionally, GitHyp released a Top 5 ranking for top peak player count, with Dota 2 also coming out on top in that chart with 1.3 million players.

Peak Players for Steam Games in 2016:

1. Dota 2 / 1,286,617 peak players (#1 in 2015)
2. Counter-Strike: Global Offensive / 845,806 peak players (#2 in 2015)
3. No Man's Sky / 212,321 peak players (new)
4. XCOM 2 / 132,834 peak players (new)
5. Dark Souls III / 129,922 peak players (new)

Finally, GitHyp reported that the Overwatch-like free-to-play shooter Paladins was the strongest 2016 release on Steam in terms of players per hour. It reportedly had an average of 22,809 players per hour during the year, outpacing Dark Souls III (14,186), No Man's Sky (8,393), and XCOM 2 (7,815).

Here are the top games on Steam right now by player count, as shared on Steam's own Stats page:

In other Steam news, the service recently hit a major milestone when 14 million people logged in at the same time, setting a new concurrent user record.