Steam Tops 30,000,000 Concurrent Users
The pandemic effect.
A Steam Special 🥇
“This isn’t The Top Five!” I know, I know. I’ll quickly share those in a second. However, I wanted to take some time to talk about Steam topping 30,000,000 concurrent users on October 23.
That is a truly wild number of people. If everyone logged into the platform on Sunday was a state, they’d be the second most populous in the United States, behind only California.
Before we look at any charts, I do want do clarify that these 30 million people are simply logged into Steam at the same time. “Only” about 8.5 million (28%) of them were actually playing a game at the time. That’s about normal, for the record. The in-game peak was back in February around 9.2 million.
This is truly staggering rise when you think about it. In the last five years, Steam has doubled its peak concurrent daily user count.
Many in the video games industry can attest that 2020 was a boon user counts for both games and websites covering games. Whereas site viewership has shrunk back down since then, on average, Steam hasn’t shown any signs of slowing down.
Take a look at how much the growth timelines have shrunk:
61 months (5 Years) to reach 1M Users - January 2008
20 months to reach 2M Users - October 2009
26 months to reach 5M Users - December 2011
42 months to reach 10M Users - June 2015
27 months to reach 15M Users - September 2017
30 months to reach 20M Users - March 2020
09 months to reach 25M Users - December 2020
11 months to reach 30M Users - October 2021
The first ten million users took more than a decade. The second? Five years. The third took less than two.
It’ll be interesting to see what happens when the pandemic is definitively over. Will Steam continue to grow? Or will there finally be a correction?
As promised, here are The Top Five.
Five New Games 🆕
Persona 5 Royal (#3)
On one hand, I’m not surprised to see Persona 5 Royal ranked so high. Fans of the franchise are insatiable, after all.
I was a bit late to the party, having only played it in 2020, but even then I’m surprised that so many are diving back in headfirst. Especially considering how long of a playthrough it is. If you have PC Game Pass, you can save yourself the money as it’s available there right now.
RimWorld: Biotech (#8)
Biotech takes the already messed up RimWorld and makes it even more messed up. You can now have kids and children, teaching them how to survive as they turn into adults. Or you can gestate embryos in a machine, stick your children in growth vats, alter them through genetic modifications and create an army of super soldiers. Video games!
The Jackbox Party Pack 9 (#28)
At this point I hope you know what these games are. If you don’t, they’re a pack of party games you play using phones, tablets, or computers for up to ten players. This pack contains Fibbage 4, Quizort, Junktopia, Nonsensory, and Roomerang.
Monster Prom 3: Monster Roadtrip (#44)
It’s a game about surviving a road trip with monsters that you can date. Here’s a review:
frolicked with horse girls. immediately died of exhaustion. the historians of the future decided i was an unlovable creature, but they do not know of the glorious neighs i neighed. of the pastures i gallantly roamed. of the winds that danced through my brilliant mane as my roadtrip reached its equine end. perhaps i was unlovable but... i was free. 10/10
MARVEL SNAP (#97)
There are other games I could have featured this week, but given the splash it has made, I wanted to feature MARVEL SNAP. Why? For one, it’s on Steam! Which is something I didn’t know myself. It’s developed by a lot of people from the original Hearthstone team and I see a lot of folks giving it credit for being super free-to-play friendly.
The Movers 🆙
As a note, this section has been updated to include games that are marked as “Returning” on the charts. Any game returning to the list has an assumed rank of 100 during the previous week. Hence Planet Zoo climbing 70 ranks from off the charts to #30.
+70 Planet Zoo
+64 RimWorld
+60 Resident Evil Village
+54 SMITE
+52 Hitman 3
The Sliders 🔽
I think there’s value in sharing which games have suddenly spiked high onto the charts, but I’m not so sure the opposite is true. These games are consistently ones that spiked last week and are now coming back down to earth. At the moment, I’m contemplating switching it up.
-56 Coral Island
-48 Stray
-47 No Man’s Sky
-37 PGA Tour 2K23
-36 Scorn
Longest Lasting ⌛
Warframe has ticked over to 500 straight weeks in the top 100.
Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (533 Weeks)
Warframe (500 Weeks)
Grand Theft Auto V (406 Weeks)
The Elder Scrolls Online (405 Weeks)
Rust (383 Weeks)
Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege (362 Weeks)
Final Fantasy XIV Online (308 Weeks)
Dead by Daylight (285 Weeks)
Destiny 2 (172 Weeks)
Red Dead Redemption 2 (151 Weeks)