Steam smashes 28 million concurrent users—nearly 3 million more than last year

Steam hit yet another concurrent user record this week, officially surpassing 28 million people using the service simultaneously.

January 9 saw 28,230,853 concurrent users, according to SteamDB. That's roughly 300,000 more people than last week's record and an increase of 2.8 million concurrent users compared to January 2021. Industry analyst Daniel Ahmad noted the "strong growth" Valve's client has experienced since the pandemic, with an increase of nearly 10 million simultaneous users between January 2020 and January 2022. There've been a few dips along the way but for the most part, Steam's seen a pretty steady upwards trajectory over those two years.

So what exactly was everyone playing on January 9? Much like last week's record, a lot of games topping SteamDB's charts are older releases. CS:GO had a tidy 881,051 people rushing B, with Dota 2, PUBG, Apex and Grand Theft Auto 5 filling out the top five spots. Some newer games like New World, Football Manager 2022 and PC Gamer's GOTY Valheim make the top 50, with 2021 releases MIR4 and Naraka: Bladepoint making the top 10.

Here are the 10 most played games for January 9:

• Counter Strike: Global Offensive
• Dota 2
• PUBG: Battlegrounds
• Apex Legends
• Grand Theft Auto 5
• Naraka: Bladepoint
• Rust
• Team Fortress 2
• Wallpaper Engine
• MIR4

With the first round of Steam Decks hopefully landing in the next month or two, I'm curious to see if the number of users will jump accordingly, or if its audience will mostly be those who've already amassed a juggernaut library of games on the platform.