Industry analysts suspect the outbreak of the coronavirus to have bumped Steam’s active user numbers through the roof.
Hey, why is everyone staying home and playing games all of sudden? That’s so weird, what a strange random happenstance. I can’t think of a single think that might be causing millions of people to hole up their abodes and refuse to speak to the outside world. It’s like there’s some kind of…virus making the rounds or something. I mean, have you heard about Steam’s concurrent user numbers? Just a week ago, on February 2, Steam broke its own record of total logged on people with a whopping 18,801,944 users logged on at once.
Now, in just over eight days, the record has been broken again. As seen on Sunday, February 9th, Steam’s concurrent player count was 19,107,803, adding a couple extra hundred thousand onto the previous record. Breaking the record so quickly is almost unheard of; the previous record before February 2nd was set in January 2018. The numbers have also translated well for specific games, with Counter-Strike: Global Offensive also breaking its previous player count record with 901, 651 users AWPing each other on Dust 2.
Industry analyst Danial Ahmad has speculated that the surge in numbers is probably due to the outbreak of the coronavirus. “Novel Coronavirus fears, city lockdowns and travel restrictions has kept people at home and one activity to pass the time is gaming”, tweeted out Ahmad.
Given the recent news that Valve will soon be releasing a “santised” version of Steam for China, it’s unlikely we’ll ever see this record broken again given that there are over 30 million Chinese Steam accounts alone. I guess Valve won’t be receiving another phone call from Guinness and I’m sure that just breaks their hearts.
Last Updated: February 11, 2020
