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Gaming kinda has its own Barbenheimer phenomenon going on this weekend as both Marvel Rivals and Path of Exile 2's early access are drawing in a record number of people onto Steam.
Steam has been steadily breaking its own concurrent user record all year as 33 million of us logged onto Valve's storefront at the beginning of the year, shortly before 37 million gamers gamed (or just browsed) at the same time during the tail end of summer. Now, that record has been pretty neatly smashed since SteamDB estimates that around 39,200,000 people were live at the same time earlier today.
That whopping crowd was drawn in by the usual suspects with Counter-Strike 2 steadily floating above a million concurrent players all by itself, while Dota 2, GTA 5, PUBG, and Rust all had hundreds of thousands of people jumping in over the weekend. This specific bump may have been thanks to a brand-new duo, however.
Marvel Rivals already had one of the biggest free-to-play launches on the platform's history, and that winning streak continued into the weekend as the new hero shooter's 24-hour peak hit 450,000. Path of Exile 2 was also a huge deal the minute it launched, but it's since continued to skyrocket, and has even broken the 530,000 concurrent player barrier - rare territory for any game.
Is 40 million concurrent players possible by the end of the year? Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is the only properly massive game left on the schedule, but I still wouldn't put it past us, especially as the holiday season properly gets going and millions of more people need an excuse to ignore their families.
In the meantime, see our upcoming games of 2025 and beyond list to find out what’s on the horizon.
