2020 was an incredibly important year for Steam. Back when 2020 first began, the state of the world changed in just a few short months and everyone was stuck at home. With everyone indoors, people took to online gaming platforms likeSteamto take their mind off the situation and this led to several records being broken by Steam. Following New Year’s Eve, yet another record has been broken.
Since the pandemic first hit,COVID-19impacted various facets of everyday life and negatively affected many different industries as a result. Although, from a financial standpoint, the gaming industry definitely benefited the most from the pandemic. Despite numerous game release delays in 2020, a lot of profit was made in terms of digital gaming, console sales, game sales overall. Arguably, Steam was the platform that gained the most amount of mileage out of the pandemic.
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All throughout 2020,Steam’s record for online usershas been getting consistently broken over and over again. However, it seems that once again, that record has been broken following New Year’s Eve. For the first time in Steam’s history, the amount of concurrent online users surpassed twenty-five million. Considering most were quarantined for New Year’s Eve, combined with the holiday season in general, it makes sense that so many people would be online at this time.
In any case, the game that largely contributed to the online player base was unsurprisinglyCounter-Strike: Global Offensive.With other titles likeDota 2andPUBGpulling their weight as well, and surprisingly,Cyberpunk 2077also maintained a high amount of online users. Back when the game first came out,Cyberpunk 2077became the first single-player Steam game to reach over one million online players.
It’s amazing how much traction the platform has gotten within the last year. Not just as a result of the pandemic, but also in terms of the amount of popular games to surface over the course of 2020. With landmark titles likeHadesandAmong Usbringing in so many new users and with even more games on the horizon, it will be interesting to see how soon the record gets broken again.
Steam’s record for concurrent userswas broken just a couple of weeks ago and the fact that it has already been broken so soon after the fact is shocking to say the least. Though, with the release of COVID-19 vaccine on the horizon, it will be interesting to see if Steam will be able to keep this same kind of extreme momentum up going into 2021.
