2020 proved to a banner year for Steam for understandable, if unfortunate reasons. The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has led to more people staying home and playing games. That leads to more PC gamers using Steam. Many predicted, however, that Steam's usage would peak during the holidays while students and families had time off. That doesn't appear to be accurate anymore, as Steam has once again broken its concurrent user record. It's the third month in a row Steam has done so.
Sundays continue to be Steam's biggest day of the week, as PC gamers woke up and logged onto the computer in greater numbers than ever before. Between 6:00 and 8:00 AM PST, Steam saw concurrent users rise to above 26 million. At its absolute peak, that number crossed 26.4 million. That's hundreds of thousands more than the previous Steam record for concurrent users, which was established in January 2021.
Steam first broke the record in December, getting near to 25 million but not quite reaching. In January, Steam healthily passed the 25 million mark. Now, to start off February, Steam has broken 26 million and made a good step toward 27 million, too. And that's after Steam already broke the record earlier in the year, too. 2021 is starting off as perhaps Steam's best year ever, but no one can predict how the rest of the year will go.
Perhaps the most striking thing about the new record for Steam's concurrent users is that there's no apparent cause for the surge. In December, the popularity of Cyberpunk 2077 was partially responsible for the new record. In January, there was the post-New Year holiday surge. There's no clear evidence of a new game or event causing February's numbers, however. Everything is just coming together at the right time.
One contributing factor could be the recent release of two popular Chinese games in Dyson Sphere Program and Tale of Immortal. Expanding Steam's userbase in China could easily add hundreds of thousands, if not millions of new users. Technically, there's a different version of Steam for China, but that doesn't seem to stop Chinese gamers from picking up the international version of Steam.
The list of games making up Steam's most-played titles at the time the record was set isn't too surprising. Counter-Strike: Global Offensive clocked 1.1 million concurrent players. Dota 2 had 660,000. PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds reached a surprising 410,000. Other games on the list include Rust, Apex Legends, Grand Theft Auto 5, Team Fortress 2, and Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Siege. It's a good time for multiplayer games, and a great time for Steam.
Source: SteamDB