Having turned 20 last year and being a dominant force in digital PC gaming, it’s hard to imagine Steam got off to a rocky start when it launched in 2003. However, here we are, and the Valve service continues to reign supreme, as it reaches another concurrent player milestone.
According to the latest figures from SteamDB, 34,649,583 players were using Steam over the weekend. To put that into perspective (not that it really needs it), Worldometer shows the population of the UK is over 67.8 million people. This means Steam’s new record was roughly half of the UK populace.
This might partly because of the ongoing Dinos vs. Robots sale (as well as the many events that take place throughout the year), which ends today. Who knows, but it goes to prove that PC gaming in the modern era is showing no signs of slowing down.
Some were twiddling their thumbs, though
Okay, so 34.6 million is a staggering amount. However, of those, only (“only“) 11.1 million were actually in-game, according to the breakdown below the graph. In total, the number equates to a 3.8% increase over February 2024. There. That’s a little extra statistic for ya.
Originally built as a way for people to update Valve games over the internet, a lot of people struggled to adapt to the digital changes that were about to happen in gaming. As a result, Steam was not very popular during its early years.
That seems inconceivable these days what with how the industry operates. Nowadays, we probably couldn’t imagine a world in which we can’t instantly download a game or a much-needed patch, especially given the state some releases are in on launch day.
