Steam has once again shown its ability to never run out of steam, as a weekend of big game launches led to it reaching its highest-ever concurrent user account. In a year of Steam beating concurrent records, it ends the year with a bang.
As reported by Sweclockers, the PC gaming platform managed to hit a total of 39,205,447 players on Sunday, December 8 at 2 PM UTC, as can be stopped on SteamDB. 12,090,313 of those were actually in games, with the rest having the Steam app open to some capacity, casually browsing, downloading games, or looking through the store.
Notably, this huge number is partially influenced by the dual launch of both Marvel Rivals and Path of Exile 2, with a few single-player releases like Dragon Age: The Veilguard, Black Myth: Wukong, and Baldur's Gate 3 contributing tens of thousands
Marvel Rivals, the superhero universe’s attempt at the Overwatch formula is not only free to play but hotly anticipated thanks to recognition of the name and a fun cast of characters. That's sure to have significantly helped the player count. At the record-breaking moment, 368,021 players were in-game.
Path of Exile 2 is an even more impressive launch as it's a paid (albeit fairly cheap) early-access launch. The game has been doing so well that its devs haven't been able to fully keep up with the demand on its servers. There were 470,715 players in this action RPG at the moment of the record, and the player figures could have been even higher if server issues didn't persist over the weekend.
This concurrent player figure is even more impressive when you consider that, in January of this year, the previous record of 33.5 million players was beaten by 33.6 million at one time. Then, in August, Steam managed to surpass 37 million concurrent users, thanks to the rather explosive launch of Black Myth: Wukong with 2.4 million concurrent users by itself. This placed it in second behind PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds, as the game with the highest all-time peak on Steam.
The launch of Marvel Rivals and Path of Exile 2 only account for just shy of a million of this new record so this suggests a general uptick in many games, not just a handful. That weekend saw big player figures in Counter-Strike 2, PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds, Dota 2, and Grand Theft Auto V too.
As we reach the end of the year, more players seem to reaching for video games. When the weather is as dark and gloomy as it is here in the UK, who can blame them?
