According to the non-Valve affiliated statistics tracking app ꦿSteam Database, there were more users logged on to the Steam store and launcher at one point yesterday, February 2, than ever before. The rush of logins capped off at 18,801,944 concurrent users. This high-point breaks a record that has been standing for two years at 18,537,490 users. In spite of the record-breaking logins💟, however, there were actually just over 1 million fewer people actually playing games on the service at 5.8 million compared to a high of 7 million. The record was broken around 2 pm Coordinated Universal Time which, for reference, is 6 am Pacific Time.
For comparison, the US Census estimates the population of Los Angeles County to be around 10 million and the city of New York is estimated at a population of around 8.3 people. So this would be as if the entire population of New York C🥃ity, Los Angeles, and the greater LA area were logged in to steam at the same time.
It’s not k💜nown what🍌 factor or combination of factors caused this record-breaking number of logins to steam. There were both CS: GO and Dota 2 Tournaments that day so people🍨 logging in to spectate using the game client then staying logged in once the competition was done might account for some of the concurrent users. Ongoing Lunar New Year celebrations along with a public health crisis in China may account for some more with people staying in and logging on to Steam instead of going to public events.
The end of the latest season of Destiny 2 is approaching so people may have logged on in great numbers to chase loot thereౠ. If the peak were a few hours later in the day the increase in users could have been people trying to escape the ‘Babynut’ discourse caused by that one ill-advised Super Bowl ad.
One fact that is clear from the breaking of this record is the overwhelming 🐎prevalence of the Steam platform on PC. Even the only place for Fortnite on PC, the Epic Games Store, is not really in the same league as Steam yet. If more big publishers follow EA’s lead and start putting their games on Steam as well as their ꦯown private stores the platform could become even more ubiquitous.
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