Steam’s user community has expanded significantly over recent years, with its latest record for concurrent users doubling the previous benchmark set less than five years ago.
As pointed out by Twitter user @Okami13_, during the past weekend, Steam surpassed a total of 40 million online users, establishing a new record. According to its own chart, an impressive 40,263,595 individuals were logged in simultaneously the previous day, March 2, at 2pm UTC. Not all of these users were actively playing games, as SteamDB’s data (which claims the peak was slightly higher at 40,270,997 concurrent users) states that 12,727,475 of them were in-game at that moment. Nonetheless, that is a huge amount of people.
Clearly, this is significant, but perhaps the most remarkable aspect is how far we have come in such a short period. It was March 15, 2020, when Steam first reached 20 million concurrent users. At that time, SteamDB speculated that the increase could be linked to the number of people staying at home due to the COVID-19 pandemic. However, the recent day was a relatively typical Sunday, albeit the one following the launch of Monster Hunter Wilds, which likely contributed to breaking the record, as it had been easily surpassing a million concurrent players since its release on Friday. Additionally, the Steam Next Fest was in full swing, which likely attracted many individuals trying out demos for upcoming new games.
While these factors definitely could have played a role, achieving an additional 20 million users in less than five years is something remarkable – the platform’s growth does not appear to be slowing down at all. Who knows, perhaps it will manage to double again over the next five years? No pressure, Steam.
Be sure to check out our Monster Hunter Wilds review to find out why this action RPG is the latest pinnacle of the series, as well as our guide to the best weapons in Monster Hunter Wilds in case you want to immerse yourself.