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Steam has broken the 27 million concurrent users mark

It was a big weekend for gaming as Valve saw Steam break through its previous record for concurrent users – twice!

For yet another time this year, Steam has set a new record for the highest number of users online at the same time.

If you though Valve's storefront and PC platform was impressive when it soared past the 25 million concurrent users landmark earlier this year, you'll be floored to know it's broken that record again. Twice.

Steam yet again broke its own record an all-time high and managed to attract over an eye-watering 27,100,000 concurrent players on Saturday, November 27. The next day (Sunday, November 28) that record was broken once again as more than 27,300,000 flocked to play games over the holiday weekend.

Not all 27 million+ players were in-game, though; the vast majority were simply logged on and either chatting, or idling. According to SteamDB, only about 7.8 million were actively playing a game when Steam broke the record. But that's how things usually shake out on the platform.

Given that Steam historically breaks its own records iin December/January as people are off over Christmas and the New Year, we can likely expect this record to change again soon. Who knows? Maybe if there's another lockdown, we'll also see Steam break its record because of the pandemic, again.

We already know that the weekend was a big one for gaming; more people were playing Farming Simulator 22 than Battlefield 2042, and Halo Infinite continued to attract more players (despite all those progression woes).

It's highly likely that the introduction of the Steam Deck in 2022 is going to help the company's concurrent player numbers in the future, too.

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About the Author
Dom Peppiatt avatar

Dom Peppiatt

Editor-in-chief

Dom is a veteran video games critic with 11 years' experience in the games industry. A published author and consultant that has written for NME, Red Bull, Samsung, Xsolla, Daily Star, GamesRadar, Tech Radar, and many more. They also have a column about games and music at The Guardian.
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