What just happened? Over the weekend, Steam once again set a record for the most concurrent users in what has been a long, steady rise. Its latest bump was likely helped by PUBG going free-to-play and a new Yu-Gi-Oh game. It's only a matter of time before Valve's platform reaches 30 million.
Steamdb's charts show that Steam hit 29,201,174 users on January 23rd at around 9am EST. Steam's own stats put the peak number at 29,198,370. Either way, Steam has climbed over the last milestone before hitting 30 million.
The number of users actually playing a game at the same time also hit a record on the 23rd, reaching 8.5 million. That beats the previous record of 8.1 million set in March 2020, just as Covid-19 lockdowns had begun.
Currently, the two most popular games on Steam are the Valve mainstays Counter-Strike: Global Offensive and Dota 2. In third is PUBG, which went free-to-play earlier this month. However, what might have finally pushed player counts to their latest records is the game currently holding fourth place---Yu-Gi-Oh! Master Duel---which is also free-to-play and came out last week. These are followed by other usual suspects like Apex Legends, Rust, Grand Theft Auto V, and Football Manager.
The next game to jump high into the charts is likely to be Elden Ring, which launches February 24 and just went gold.