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Coronavirus leads to new Steam concurrent player record, again

Coronavirus leads to new Steam concurrent player record, again

More than 22m people were using Steam at the same time this weekend just gone.

That's a new record for Valve's platform, with 22,670,375 concurrent users on Steam at the same time on Sunday, March 22nd, according to the official stats for Valve's platform.

That's 2.3m more users than the last all-time high, which was reached just seven days earlier on Sunday, March 15th. This is no doubt due to more people staying indoors and self-isolating due to the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic which has swept the world.

In January 2020, there were 18.5m concurrent users, before a new record of 18.8m simultaneous players was set the following month.

China is likely a boost to Steam's concurrent player stats given that it is a growing market for Valve's platform despite not being officially available in the region. Valve is working with local partner Perfect World to release an official version of the storefront in the country. China has been under a heavy lockdown since January 23rd to help slow the spread of the coronavirus. The current global pandemic began in the Chinese city of Wuhan.

It's not just the Steam platform that is seeing higher and higher concurrent user figures; Valve's own Counter-Strike: Global Offensive is attracting more and more users, hitting one million simultaneous players earlier this month. The game went free-to-play in 2018.


PCGamesInsider Contributing Editor

Alex Calvin is a freelance journalist who writes about the business of games. He started out at UK trade paper MCV in 2013 and left as deputy editor over three years later. In June 2017, he joined Steel Media as the editor for new site PCGamesInsider.biz. In October 2019 he left this full-time position at the company but still contributes to the site on a daily basis. He has also written for GamesIndustry.biz, VGC, Games London, The Observer/Guardian and Esquire UK.