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Steam Reaches 14 Million Concurrent User Milestone
For the first time in its 13-year history, over 14 million people were on Steam at the same time, marking a new all-time high for the service.
The new peak happened at around noon today, when 14,207,039 people were all online at the same time, buying games, playing them, and (most likely) looking at Steam trading cards and Counter-Strike gun skins. This does not seem to come as a result of a new game launch or event, but rather a slow and steady increase of users every day, as you can tell by the steady uptick in users every day on Steam's own stats page for the service.
Along with the service-wide numbers, the page also lists the most popular games on the service. As of this writing, the ten most popular games and their peak users today on the service are:
1. Dota 2: 951,942
2. Counter-Strike: Global Offensive: 675,195
3. Grand Theft Auto V: 116,230
4. ARK: Survival Evolved: 71,280
5. Team Fortress 2: 70,612
6. Garry's Mod: 68,020
7. Rocket League: 65,190
8. Football Manager: 2017 64,433
9. Rust: 63,709
10. Arma 3: 53,102
Dota 2 continues to be the most popular game on Steam, although today, it and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive were jockeying for the highest concurrent users. However, Dota 2's all-time peak user number (1,291,328 players) still beats Global Offensive's (850,485 players) by a large margin. It also shouldn't be surprising that Valve's own games (the previous two mentioned as well as Team Fortress 2 and Garry's Mod) are among the services' most popular games, since they are only available to PC users on the service. Survival games like ARK and Rust are also extremely popular, as is Grand Theft Auto V. Most surprising, perhaps, is the ongoing popularity of Rocket League, which was able to crack the top 10 and be the PlayStation 4's most downloaded game of last year.
[Source: Steam]
Our Take
Well hey, Mazel Tov to Valve! Sales downtimes and overcrowding issues notwithstanding, they run a pretty good service. Here's to 15 million.
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