Over 20 million people were on Steam this Sunday and most of them weren’t even playing any games.
While the gaming industry has suffered negatively thanks to the coronavirus, with numerous events being delayed or cancelled, it looks as if Steam has gained some benefit from it.
On
Sunday, at around 1:35pm GMT, Steam had over 20 million concurrent users,
completely smashing the previous
record of over 18 million from last month.
This was reported on by Steam Database, which pointed out that the result was most likely due to the self-isolation brought about by the coronavirus.
The top games being played are unsurprising and unchanged from last time – Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, Dota 2, and PUBG – but what’s somewhat surprising is that most people weren’t even playing any games.
At the time of writing, the total number of people online is now over 15 million, but only roughly 3 million (about a fifth of them) are in-game. The rest are likely either browsing the store, idling through their libraries, or have just left Steam running in the background.
Despite this, these numbers are good for Valve and show continued growth for the platform. While there has been much more competition over the last couple of years, with the rise of other similar platforms like the Epic Games Store, Valve clearly isn’t in any danger yet.
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