Steam Sets a New Record With 28 Million Concurrent Users

Steam remains the world’s most popular gaming store and platform, and they continuously set new records for concurrent users. And yesterday, they did it again by having over 28 million concurrent users.

The specific number of concurrent users was 28,230,661, which is pretty damned impressive on its own. But analyst Daniel Ahmad hit Twitter to explain the impact of COVID-19 on Steam and how the platform has only grown more popular each year.

Steam hit 28 million concurrent users today.

Concurrent users saw strong growth during 2020, due to the impact of COVID-19, but it's clear that growth also continued to persist in 2021.

Peaks reached each Jan:

Jan 2019: 17.6m
Jan 2020: 18.3m
Jan 2021: 25.4m
Jan 2022: 28.2m https://t.co/iBRLqLGqAw
— Daniel Ahmad (@ZhugeEX) January 9, 2022

To make things even sweeter for Valve, some of the most popular games on Steam are Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (which peaked yesterday at 881,051 players) and Dota 2 (which peaked at 748,270 players).

Only time will tell if Steam can keep up this momentum. After all, Ubisoft dislikes Valve’s business model and no longer sells games via Steam. And Steam is also getting some stiff competition from Epic Games Store, which isn’t above bribing players with regular helpings of free games to win their affection.

Still, looking at Ahmad’s breakdown above, it doesn’t look like Steam is going to fail anytime soon! And if the delayed Steam Deck proves popular once it finally releases, Steam may get another surge of popularity in the coming months.