Steam hits 18.5 million concurrent users

Steam is growing so quickly it just may take over the world one day—or at least bring everyone to its platform to buy and play games. It just hit 18.5 million concurrent users, which is about 4 million additional concurrent users than it had last January in 2017. That’s some pretty big growth in a year, and a new record for the platform. 

Steam is growing so quickly it just may take over the world one day—or at least bring everyone to its platform to buy and play games. It just hit 18.5 million concurrent users, which is about 4 million additional concurrent users than it had last January in 2017. That’s some pretty big growth in a year, and a new record for the platform. 

SteamDatabase has the details, where you can see all the particular game details and statistics of what people have been playing and what has ended up contributing to the 18.5 million player peak. The concurrent users total doesn’t mean that everyone currently logged into the service has to be playing a game at the time, and could simply mean that users are available online. It’s still an impressive number, regardless. 

Back in January 2012, only 5 million concurrent players were registered via SteamDatabase, which is a massive jump from just six years ago. This should come as no surprise with games like PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds smashing records for concurrent players on its own and making new sales records all the way there. Plus, there are so many more games available on Steam compared to years past, with more and more distributors choosing to place their games there. 

If you were ever thinking the platform could be in danger of dying off, these numbers truly prove otherwise, and will likely continue to inflate over the next few years. In fact, you’re probably logged in on Steam right now, aren’t you?