Steam Sets New Lifetime User Record

I think we all knew this was coming since a lot of us have been off for the holidays. However, it seems that Reddit and SteamDB have spotted a new lifetime milestone for Steam. Both the Lifetime Concurrent Users metric, and the Lifetime Concurrent Users In-Game metric have reached a new record over the holiday period between Christmas and New Year’s.

For reference, the previous record for users in-game was for the week of March 30^th, 2020, not too long after the pandemic began and people were stuck at home. The record number of concurrent users for that time period was 8,171,592 which just got beaten out as of yesterday morning at a whopping 8,219,950.

As for the Lifetime Concurrent Users total, which refers to people on Steam at the same time, not necessarily in a game, the record now stands at 27,942,036 as of Sunday, January 2^nd. The previous record was held back in March of 2021, at a whopping 26,992,926 users. This happened to break the previous milestone for that same week, (you guessed it!) due to the pandemic’s beginning in 2020.

As for what people are and were playing most in that timeframe, the top games continue to be multiplayer titles, most of which have been out a while. Games like Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, DOTA 2, and PUBG: Battlegrounds top the list. However, newcomer New World (from Amazon Games) has also started to climb the ranks, reaching seventh place on the day the new users-in-game record was made.

It isn’t all that surprising, especially when you consider that the holiday break brings many people to spend time playing games with their friends and family. There is also the inclusion of people hopping on Steam to check out the Steam Sale, and then summarily going to play their new bounty. I’m sure a fair few people also spent time on things like Fortnite, Overwatch, Call of Duty: Warzone, and other games not on the Steam platform thanks to differing launchers, etc. It is always interesting to see how the holidays bring gamers together, isn’t it?