Steam's kicked off with a bang in 2022, once again breaking its own concurrent user record, this time topping a staggering 27.9 million simultaneous users earlier today.
As spotted by SteamDB, it marks the digital platform's highest ever concurrent peak – 27,942,036 to be precise – 8.2 million of which were actively in-game at the time.
Steam's records are usually broken at times when lots of us are off work or stuck at home, so it makes sense that the final weekend before a lot of people go back to work after the holidays – and during a time when the world is experiencing an uptick in COVID-19 cases – more people are online playing games than usual.
Steam's upward trend began two years ago in January 2020 when the world began to self-isolate at the start of the COVID-19 crisis. On February 2, Steam's existing record of 18,537,490 users – set in January 2018 – was surpassed, smashing the existing record by an impressive 300,000 to peak at 18,801,944 players.
It's gone on to be broken several times since, including a weekend in March 2020 which saw numbers breach 20 million for the first time, and then 22 million just a week later. We saw 24.7 million users peak in December 2020, 26.5 million in February 2021, and most recently, 27.1 million concurrent users a little over a month ago.
ICYMI, Steam is back with its Best of 2021, detailing Steam's Top Sellers, Top New Releases, Most Played Games, Top Early Access Graduates, Top Selling VR Games, and Top Controller Games for 2021, Steam's Best of 2021 charts performance from January 1, 2021, to December 15, 2021.
This year, Dead by Daylight, Valheim, and New World join games like Battlefield 2042, Dota 2, and Destiny 2 as Steam's top-grossing games, as well as Naraka Bladepoint, Rainbow Six Siege, PUBG Battlegrounds, Apex Legends, CS:GO, and GTA 5 (of course).
The Most Played games are organized by peak concurrent player count and "grouped into thresholds based on the number of players", and this year include Valheim, New World, Dota 2, Rust, CS:GO, Halo Infinite, Apex Legends, PUBG, Cyberpunk 2077, and GTA 5. All have secured a peak of over 200,000 concurrent players.
Halo Infinite, Valheim, Mass Effect Legendary Edition, and Farming Simulator 22 are amongst the year's biggest new releases.
