Steam continues to prove itself the most popular and populous of online stores and digital gaming platforms, with a new record for concurrent players. With a leap of over 300,000 gamers, the most Steam players at any one time is now 18.8 million, which was reached on Sunday, February 2, at 19:20 EST.
This is more momentous than you might think, because Steam's growth has slowed significantly in the past couple of years, most likely due to the shift away from Steam as the only major store and with games like Fortnite and the new Auto Battlers leading to eloping to other platforms and stores like Epic Game Store. The last player record was 18.54 million set in January 2018, so it's taken two years to up that ante.
But now things are on a significant rise once again, it may continue to do so moving forward, especially with a heap of new high profile games expected to launch in 2020.
There are new consoles which could draw players away towards the end of the year though, and it's not like the most popular games on Steam are very new. The current most populous are Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, Dota 2, Playerunknown’s Battlegrounds, Grand Theft Auto V, and Monster Hunter: World, which acount for more than 10 percent of the whole playerbase by themselves. GTA V and DOTA 2 are both nearly seven years old, and CS:GO is almost eight.
Do you see Steam continuing to grow throughout 2020?
