While Steam has witnessed one and another games that break historical records in both sales and concurrent players numbers, itself has joined that queue as well — a new milestone was hit on March 2, with over 40 million players playing on the platform simultaneously.
As spotted by Blues News, the charts show that the peak online player count was 40,263,662 at 22:00 on Sunday, and over 26 million players are online at the moment of writing. Slightly over a year after reaching the record of 33,675,229 concurrent users, the number has the potential to keep growing.
While weekends definitely bring tides to the user number, the newly released Monster Hunter Wilds, which ranked top in both the top-selling chart and most-played chart, has been a great helper for Valve in breaking the mark. Of course, other games that are capable of attracting a large number of players, such as Counter-Strike 2, Dota 2, Marvel Rivals, and PUBG, have been pillars as well.
At the same time, the great relationship between the platform and users is definitely a contributor. The platform itself is winning growing favorite sentiments from players with a series of new or enhanced policies that are great examples of user-friendly orientation. This strengthening connection amidst the growing PC gaming marketing makes the miracle happen.
Steam has been steadily growing since its launch in September 2003, and it was made only possible by winning a lawsuit with Counter-Strike’s publisher at that time, Sierra Entertainment, where a Korean-speaking intern named Andrew helped the now giant but then a starter-up to win and free from being bankrupt.
Fast forward to two decades later, it is appropriately the dominant force in game distribution, one that Amazon’s Prime Gaming tries to beat but seems to have little chance of winning — its VP Ethan Evans admitted that no one at Amazon “cracked the code” as they ultimately “underestimated what made consumers use Steam.”
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