Game distribution service Steam has managed to attain 30 million concurrent users, and there seems to be no slowing down. The service has been growing immensely in recent years and has snatched another big milestone. Just a few short years ago, Steam wasn't even topping 20 million concurrent users.
Valve, the developer of Half-Life and Portal, released the game platform Steam in 2003 to offer gamers a one-stop shop for all gaming needs. Steam offers a game store, game library, patching mechanism, community pages, and much more. In addition to Steam, Valve is now also producing the gaming device Steam Deck, developed the VR platform SteamVR with Valve Index headset, and is still making games. Since Steam's inception, many of the largest game publishers have created their own platforms to compete with Steam, including Epic Games and EA with Origin.
Ever since the pandemic started, the growth trajectory of Steam has been altered. While Steam had been growing steadily prior to the pandemic, averaging around 2 million concurrent users added each year, Steam's pace changed in 2020. As the service entered 2020, it was just about to crack the 20 million user milestone. Now just over two years later, Steam's concurrent users have first-time ever surpassed 30 million.
The figure shows users that have Steam running on their computers, which could be just turning it on as opposed to actively playing video games. To give a more accurate estimate of concurrent Steam gamers, the unaffiliated online service SteamDB offers that figure, too. According to the charts, Steam has been recently reaching 8.5 million concurrent gamers, playing games like the recently released Modern Warfare 2 campaign. While this isn't an all-time high, there is similar growth in proportion to concurrent users.
Earlier this year Steam announced growth figures for 2021 and revealed that concurrent users had passed 27 million. Now, that this year's peak is perhaps yet to be seen, the pace might be more like 4 million users added each year, around double the amount compared to before the pandemic. The most popular game is still Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, which is producing more than a million concurrent players consistently.
While Steam is breaking records, and becoming more and more profitable for Valve, the company still hasn't forgotten its roots. The company is still making games, and datamine suggests Valve is working on another Half-Life title. There are no details about the game, so who knows whether it would be a sequel to the supremely successful VR game Half-Life: Alyx, or perhaps finally Half-Life 3.
Source: SteamDB