Steam Sets New Record With Over 39 Million Concurrent Players, Some New Games Doing Well

[GFreeman]

Steam has set a new record of over 39 million concurrent players, breaking its earlier record of over 38 million set back in September. Some of the recently launched games like S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl, Marvel Rivals, and Path of Exile 2 are doing quite well.

As spotted by DSOGaming, the newest Steam record for concurrent players is set at 39,205,447. It took around three months to break the previous record of over 38 million concurrent players set back in September. When it comes to the list of most played games in the last 24 hours, Counter-Strike 2 and Dota 2 are still holding the top two places, but some recently launched games are also doing quite well.



Path of Exile 2 from Grinding Gear Games took third place, with an all-time peak of over 500k players. This does not come as a surprise considering that players have even managed to overwhelm the servers. Path of Exile 2 is currently also the top seller on Steam. Marvel Rivals also managed to get to the fourth place and this free-to-play game managed to get over 450k concurrent players. S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl, Delta Force, and Baldur's Gate 3 are also on the list, getting a lot of attention on Steam.

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[claylomax]

And most free to play, no wonder.

 

[EatingDirt]

Marvel Rivals is apparently practically Overwatch in the Marvel Universe and f2p, so it's numbers are not surprising. Have some friends trying that out, but I no longer find joy in PvP gameplay, so it's not for me.

(edit: PoE2)is not actually f2p right now($30, with $30 equivalent of in game microtransaction $), so it's numbers are a bit more surprising. I myself was one of the 578,000 people playing Path of Exile over the weekend, playing what frankly was entirely too much. Great game already, looking forward to more classes, skills and the last 3 chapters of the campaign set to release throughout 2025.

 

[FoulOnWhite]

Any wonder why steam is the no.1 game launcher

 

[Daven]

Due to ecosystem lock-in, being the first to deploy a worldwide digital gaming store has it’s advantages.

 

[Imouto]

Except for Indiana Jones. Those Hi-Fi Rush numbers don't seem too promising for the studio's existence.

 

[AcE]

Any wonder why steam is the no.1 game launcher

Because of Counter-Strike, what else. One of the first huge games, and Steam launched with it.

 

[TheDeeGee]

Marvel Rivals, that's game with the kernel level anti-cheat right?

 

[Imouto]

Marvel Rivals, that's game with the kernel level anti-cheat right?

No.

Edit: Seems to be the case. It's not needed on Linux and the Steam page doesn't state it as it should.

 

[cal5582]

Due to ecosystem lock-in, being the first to deploy a worldwide digital gaming store has it’s advantages.

they also tend to favor the consumer over the corporations. kind of makes us actually like them on some level.

 

[neatfeatguy]

Due to ecosystem lock-in, being the first to deploy a worldwide digital gaming store has it’s advantages.

They weren't the first worldwide digital gaming store, they just happened to be a gaming platform that tied Half-Life 2 (widely popular and well sold game that required Steam) to it and folks kind of stuck with it. I want to say Stardock had a digital platform out before Steam.

 

[kapone32]

It's the Christmas season and this has been a great year for Gaming.

 

[TheDeeGee]

No.

Alright then.

https://x.com/AntiCheatPD/status/1865535357778833532?mx=2

 

[Daven]

They weren't the first worldwide digital gaming store, they just happened to be a gaming platform that tied Half-Life 2 (widely popular and well sold game that required Steam) to it and folks kind of stuck with it. I want to say Stardock had a digital platform out before Steam.

Steam wasn't the first digital store but they were the first worldwide digital gaming store with a decent size content library. I never heard of Stardock. Were they worldwide? How many games did they have in the catalog?

 

[Squared]

Due to ecosystem lock-in, being the first to deploy a worldwide digital gaming store has it’s advantages.

It helps that Valve consistently makes its customers happy. The biggest complaint I've ever heard about Valve is not making Half Life 3. I've heard much bigger complaints about EA and Epic and Blizzard.

 

[freeagent]

I have 0 complaints with Steam, 17 years of service

 

[owcraftsman]

My contribution to Steam uptick, I've been playing Delta Force (Free to play) lately which just came out and benchmarking some new hardware with 3Dmark a Steam app.
If you are a Battlefield fan or like FPS gaming I highly recommend Delta Force.

 

[phints]

Same, 19 years for me. Let's hit that 40M during the holidays.

No.

If they don't add this ASAP it will be unplayable in no time.

 

[freeagent]

Remember when half a million playing was a big number lol.. good times. I would have gotten steam sooner, but I was cheap and did not want to pay. Now I pay..

 

[EatingDirt]

Due to ecosystem lock-in, being the first to deploy a worldwide digital gaming store has it’s advantages.

They weren't the first, but they were the first to make their client good.

Just the two notables off the top of my head:

1. The ability to create multiple and new install directories and game detection in those directories (Epic store can't detect already installed games without weird work-arounds).
2. For those of us that are older and have huge game catalogues, the ability to ignore games, and within that feature, to indicate different platforms or straight ignore them(to better serve as an algorithm for games you like/don't like).

I desperately wish that other storefronts would add an ignore feature so I could ignore the 800+ games I already own on Steam, Epic, GoG, etc. I want to see games I don't already own or am not interested in. I might frequent them more often if they had an ignore feature.

 

[AsRock]

they also tend to favor the consumer over the corporations. kind of makes us actually like them on some level.

Yes of course it is when you own nothing.

 

[Imouto]

Alright then.

https://x.com/AntiCheatPD/status/1865535357778833532?mx=2

Maybe it isn't a kernel level anticheat? The game works on Linux with all that means.

Besides the behavior would be retarded even for Windows. Does it ask for admin privileges to install that?

 

[evernessince]

Due to ecosystem lock-in, being the first to deploy a worldwide digital gaming store has it’s advantages.

There is no lock-in on steam. Nothing is stopping people from using other platforms other than the merits of steam itself. There are is even game aggregation software to combine all your game libraries from multiple store-fronts.

No, the reason steam is successful is because they are the only one's that have approached making a platform from the perspective of "how can we make this better" instead of "how can we make money". Not to say Valve is flawless of course, they are just the only one's actually trying. The rest are just trying to cash in.

 

[dir_d]

21 Years here no problems

 

[Nater]

"PC gaming is dead"

Feel like we've heard that every console cycle.