The biggest video game launcher in the history of video games has just hit its highest concurrent user count of all time.
These are very interesting numbers because if you look at the graphic shared by Wario64, you will notice that only around 14 million of these users are currently playing games.
One might attribute these numbers to the release of Black Myth: Wukong, currently the most-played game on Steam. Wukong is already one of the platform’s biggest-ever hits, but it is only responsible for two million concurrent players, a comparatively low figure if you’re looking at the big number.
The big figure comes about as a natural result of the gaming community’s continual growth, which has coincided with the improvements that Valve’s platform has gone through over the years. Back when it came out, Steam was merely meant as a launcher to increase the ease of access for Valve titles. Many weren’t too keen on this “innovation” as resources weren’t as abundant back then, and because of just plain old skepticism towards an app that “just ran on the background, trust me.”
Steam quickly grew into a marketplace and then into a community hub that most people trust and adore. Even if you don’t care about games, it’s hard not to laugh at Steam reviews. When not being abused to review bomb in an attempt at destroying a game’s fair chances at success, Steam reviews are some of the best sources of comedic material on the Internet.
Steam is still the best place for games
But all the positive community aspects of Steam draw life from the quality of Steam’s mainstay titles – even when you’re not playing them. Games like Team Fortress 2 are forever embedded into our collective gamer hearts. Valve’s very own Dota 2 and Counter-Strike series have never stopped being popular, with Counter-Strike 2 currently sitting at over one million concurrent players.
Then there are the third-party big hitters, such as Grand Theft Auto V, a game that will never die and never stop generating memes, and PUBG: Battlegrounds, which put the Battle Royale genre on the map.
Lastly, there are the weird and unexpected hits. The best of the bunch is Banana, a bizarrely simple game that has somehow maintained a firm grip on Steam’s Top 10 with 400,000 concurrent banana clickers. My favorite is Wallpaper Engine, which is not even a game. It’s an app that will give you access to many beautifully animated wallpapers. It’s sitting at over 80,000 concurrent users, making it Steam’s 14th biggest “game.”
A little over 20 years after it released to give players a more practical way to play Counter-Strike and a questionable way to play Half-Life 2 — yes, the mess of needing an Internet connection to play a single-player began here — Valve’s platform still shows no signs of slowing down. The 40-million concurrent users barrier might fall anytime now.
