Steam keeps breaking concurrent-user records as new games arrive

What just happened? There’s been a slew of great new titles landing on Steam recently, and that’s good news not only for gamers, but also for Valve. The platform has broken its concurrent user record four times over the last month, peaking yesterday when 38,367,277 people were logged into Steam simultaneously.

Steam’s run began on August 25 when the runaway success of Black Myth: Wukong helped attract 37.2 million concurrent users. Note that this covers people who were logged in at the same time – not all of them were playing games.

As shown by SteamDB, that record only lasted until September 8, when 37.6 million people were using Steam. One week later, the figure hit 37.7 million, only to be broken another week later when 38.3 million concurrent users were logged in.

Interestingly, the in-game concurrent record – the number of people playing games on Steam simultaneously – has remained unbroken since it hit 12.5 million on August 25. That’s likely due to the huge number of players who enjoyed Black Myth: Wukong at launch.

Also read: Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 GPU Benchmark

Several highly-anticipated new games have arrived on Steam recently, helping break player records on multiple occasions. Black Myth was the biggest attraction, having broken Steam’s concurrent record for a single-player game within hours of its release. It’s also been reported that around 80% of the game’s players are from China.

More recently, the excellent Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 has reached a peak of 225,690 players. It’s possible that a recent endorsement on Instagram from Warhammer megafan Henry Cavill, who is starring in and producing a Warhammer show on Amazon, will further boost player numbers.

Other recent releases riding high in the Steam charts include God of War: Ragnarök, despite it being review bombed over Sony requiring a PSN account to play the game. There’s also the grim city-builder Frostpunk 2, as well as discounts on favorites such as Crusader Kings III, Cyberpunk 2077, and Total War: Warhammer III.

With the holidays approaching, more new games on the way, and Steam’s massive seasonal sales to look forward to, expect the concurrent record to be broken several more times before the year is out. Will we finally see it hit 50 million in 2025?

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