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Steam hits 132m monthly active players during 2021

Steam hits 132m monthly active players during 2021

PC platform Steam attracted 132 million monthly active players last year.

That's according to Valve's Year in Review for 2021, which says that the service saw a 15 per cent increase in monthly active users. Steam brought in 69 million daily active users, an increase on the 62.6 million it achieved in 2020. People spent 38 billion hours playing on Steam, a 21 per cent increase year-on-year.

Valve also reports that it saw 2.6 million first time purchasers every single month during 2021, around the same rate that was seen during 2020 during the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic. In total, there were 31.2 million new purchasers on Steam last year.

"Player spending on games rose 27% compared to 2020, growing even more than playtime did," Valve wrote.

"That growth wasn't just due to existing players, either - Steam saw 2.6M first-time purchasers each month of 2021, roughly the same rate of new purchaser growth we saw in 2020 as the global pandemic unfolded."


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.