All around the world social isolation is being practiced to curb the spread of coronavirus infection. This results in more people than ever are using Valve’s digital gaming platform. Steam has counted a record-breaking 20 million concurrent users (as counted by SteamDB—20,313,451 to be precise), with 6.2 million of those people in-game.
A month ago we were all being very impressed when Steam hit 19 million concurrents, to put that number in perspective. And as for the 6.2 million in game, there were almost a million more players in-game back on New Year’s Day 2018 when PUBG was the shiny new thing. At the moment CS:GO is the game at the top of the Steam charts, and away from Steam it’s Call of Duty: Warzone that’s drawing in big numbers, with 15 million players in its first week. Looking at Steamcharts, you can see other upward swings for other games in recent days from Rainbow Six: Siege to DOTA 2.
Steam’s upward trend began in January when Chinese nationals began to self-isolate at the start of the COVID-19 crisis. On February 2nd, Steam’s previous record of 18,537,490 users – set in January 2018 – was surpassed, smashing the existing record by an impressive 300,000 to peak at 18,801,944 players.
As we predicted yesterday, both @Steam and @CSGO have again passed their concurrently online players peaks.
Track the charts here:
Steam: https://t.co/D6WDHbz0B4
CSGO: https://t.co/ctFAqBuucZThey’re still increasing ?
— Steam Database (@SteamDB) February 9, 2020
While Valve has certainly benefited from all the extra time that people now have, renewed interest in its games means more content for the fans who enjoy playing them. Now, veteran players are awash with a surge of new people who might be experiencing a game for the first time. For them, it’s like Christmas time all over again.
It remains to be seen if Steam will continue to see such huge growth numbers. While continued quarantines and social isolation around the world are hardly helpful developments overall, they do contribute to a greater number of players on Steam and other gaming platforms.
