Steam received an increased amount of concurrent users on Christmas Day in comparison to previous years.
The gaming client saw a huge amount of players logging in this holiday season, almost beating the service’s record of concurrent users at once.
Christmas Day saw 23 million users logging on, according to games industry analyst, Daniel Ahmad. Amongst those 23 million players, the most popular games are said to be Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, DOTA 2, PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds, Cyberpunk 2077 and Grand Theft Auto V.
The number is an increase of just over seven million from 2019, which boasted 15.8 million concurrent users. Christmas Day’s figures almost beats the record for the number of players logged in at once, as December 12 saw a record breaking 24.78 million players, following the launch of Cyberpunk 2077.
See the full tweet below:
Steam has hit record high peak concurrent user numbers multiple times this year.
The pandemic had a notable impact on both engagement and behavior, with a higher amount of users during off peak times too. https://t.co/tL2pgmcqFW
— Daniel Ahmad (@ZhugeEX) December 28, 2020
As Ahmad points out, Steam has seen an influx throughout the year due to the on-going coronavirus pandemic, which has forced many people to stay at home or to be furloughed. As a result, an increase in gaming has been seen across the board as people spend more time in the house.
Additionally, Ahmad also acknowledges that many social games have risen in popularity over the year, citing examples such as Among Us and Fall Guys. Both of which have become some of the year’s biggest games. Steam recently released a list of the top games of 2020, a few of which made the cut.
Video game funding on Kickstarter was also its biggest since 2015 this year, with a total of $22.9million backed to an assortment of games.
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