Growing infatuation with Steam player numbers as a means to gauge a game's success or popularity has ultimately misled a lot of people, worries Palworld liaison and Pocketpair publishing lead John Buckley.
Because Steam is both the dominant platform for PC gaming and the only major platform that shares live, granular player data, Steam player counts, particularly concurrent users, are regularly used as a measuring stick, or just as often, a bludgeon. It could be Arc Raiders, Palworld, Peak, How to Fish, or Baldur's Gate 3; gamers will put you under the SteamDB or Steam Charts microscope.
Buckley's regularly pushed back on the "dead game" doomsaying chucked at Palworld and countless other games over the years, arguing that player falloff is normal and expected, and that numbers often described as dire are in fact quite healthy. In an interview at Gamescom 2026, he describes the Steam number chatter as part of a larger misunderstanding.
"The numbers are so distorted with Palworld," he says. "I so vividly remember the 2.1 million concurrent to half a million concurrent [period]. Some of the most viral posts at that time were, 'This is the biggest game dropoff of all time.' And I was like, half a million people playing a game at any one moment, it makes me want to be sick, how staggering that is."
Though Palworld was biggest on PC, it wasn't only on PC, and this is one problem with Steam math. We can estimate trends based on a game's Steam community, and Steam player numbers do have genuine value and applications, but we can't get a reliable picture of a multiplatform release. The factors driving spikes and dips in those numbers are also much more varied than whether a game is good or bad. Sales, update cadence, server downtime, time zones, and replayability can have a big impact.
In a similar vein, Buckley looks at what concurrent Steam users can and can't tell us.
"And not to dog on SteamDB, because I love those guys, but I think of how public these numbers have become in recent years," he says. "People really love pulling these numbers up recently. Now we know why consoles don't like to share them."
As it happens, Sony recently began testing a tiny PS5 widget which, in some way, offers a snapshot of game activity not too far removed from Steam Charts. And even that small glimpse into the console black box seems to come with huge obfuscation.
"People look at these, and I think that's all really misunderstood now," Buckley continues. "I think people think 500,000 CCU one hour and 400,000 CCU one hour means 100,000 people stopped playing. That's not what it means, because any second two could log on and two could log off.
"I think we need to start sharing DAU [daily active users]. I wouldn't be against making DAUs public – the amount of actual people who played a game in one day. Because I think a lot of people would be shocked how different these numbers are. You know, a game that has 1,000 CCU could have 20,000 DAU. The numbers are quite different."
Buckley, like Warframe boss Rebecca Ford, worries the blood sport that Steam math has become can poison discussion and critique.
"It's hard to deal with those numbers," Buckley adds. "Everyone's getting it. No one's immune to this anymore. Poor Marathon and stuff are getting dragged through the mud with this right now, and I'm sure our day's coming a few weeks from now. I'm sure people will say Palworld's dropped under 100,000. And oh no, under 100,000. It's coming."
