Over 20 million players played their games on Steam at the same time today according to Valve’s internal statistics. Whether the influx of players is due to concerns over the Coronavirus or it is simply a lazy Sunday all over the world one thing is certain – this is the largest number of concurrent players ever seen on the PC gaming service. As of this writing there are currently over 19.5 million players signed in but that number was as high as 20.3 million according to the screenshot below.
What is especally impressive about the large amount of activity on Steam is that it happened despite aggressive competition from the Epic Games Store which has been channeling huge amounts of money to game developers in exchange for timed exclusivity with key titles. That is on top of established competition in the PC game launcher market like GOG Galaxy which iw owned by Cd Projekt Red and Origin from Electronic Arts.
Having over 20 million players on Steam at the same time is bound to swell the population of popular games. Grand Theft Auto V remains popular over five years since it was released on PC. Over 175,000 people played the game on Steam today while PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds swelled with over half a million players competing for their chicken dinners. Valve’s Counter Strike: GlobalOffensive remains ridiculously popular nearly eight years since its release with over a million players taking up arms in the game today.
Other top games on Steam today include Destiny 2, Ark: Survival Evolved and Tom Clancy’s Ranbow Six Siege.
with numbers like these in mind, is it any surprise that Sony is joining Microsoft by bringing exclusives like Horizon: Zero Dawn to Steam?
I think it is safe to say that a large number of you reading this article took the time to play some games today. If you did, let me know on Twitter whether you played on Steam, some other service or your consoles. I would love to know.
