Steam sets a record for concurrent users at the end of the holidays

Steam broke the all-time concurrent user record on the final day of its two-week weekend-holiday slowdown in much of the globe. The total number of simultaneous users reached 27,942,036, which was around Sunday morning EST. This surpasses 26,922,926 concurrent users logged in during the week ending March 29, 2021.

According to SteamDB. These numbers were discovered by Turbostrider27 via Reddit on Sunday morning, in an article that was gaining a lot attention at r/pcgaming. At the time of writing, the concurrent user total was a shade over 27 million at the same time on Monday morning, but it typically peaks around the 7 to 8 a.m. EST hour each day (including weekdays), so it’s unclear if another record could be set today.

SteamDB Image

The 27 million concurrent users is simply what it says — users logged into the Steam client. However, the actual number of people playing games is much lower at 8,219,000.950 That number still just eclipses the previous in-game record of 8,171,592 recorded during the week of March 30, 2020 — a couple of weeks after the COVID-19 pandemic was declared and people worldwide began lockdown lifestyles with lots of indoor activity.

In March 2021, the all-users number for the same pandemic in 2020 was a new record. It was broken, however, interestingly, just one year later. But a scan of Steam’s user chart going back to its launch in 2003 shows record-setting user spikes right around the new year. In the week of Jan. 4, 2021, Steam’s 25,425,816 concurrent users set a record, and so did the 18,801,944 for the week of Jan. 20, 2020.

This record was also broken by the 18,537.490 users for the week beginning Jan. 8, 2018, and the 14,370.042 that occurred the following week, Dec. 26, 2016. The latter figure eclipsed Steam’s second-biggest non-holiday spike of the past six years — 13,474,259 users, for the week of Oct. 19, 2015.

People are still playing the most popular multiplayer game in the past decade. Counter-StrikeGlobal Offensive, launched in 2012, peaked at 824,298 so far today, with 2013’s Dota 2 Second place is 748,189. A distant third is PUBG: Battlegrounds, at 336.367 MMO is the biggest launch of 2021 in the top 10. New WorldWith 117.504 users, he is in 7th place.