Steam, the popular online video game store, has had its biggest Christmas day sale yet, with a large increase in players from 2019 to 2020. Steam has become one of the biggest digital gaming platforms around, and due to the increase of gaming in the pandemic, it was only a matter of time before the company set new records.
The game distributor has been around since 2003 and has grown over time into the giant that it is today. For many gamers, Steam is the number one way to buy new PC games. In December, it was announced that Steam had hit an all-time concurrent player count record, with a staggering 24 million players all logged in at once. But it looks like that’s not the only record Steam set this month, having bagged another one for players using the service on Christmas day.
Valve’s tracking site for Steam (via Game Rant) said that on Christmas day, there were around 23 million concurrent Steam users just before 7:00 a.m. PT. While some users may think that this looks like a decrease from the previous record, this is for Christmas day alone, and the number looks even more impressive when one compares it to the 2019 number – which was only 15 million concurrent users at one point. The days after Christmas showed even higher numbers, hitting nearly 25 million concurrent users on the 26th and 27th.
2020 has been a huge year for Steam, with March (the beginning of quarantine) in particular being a big month. This is when the company suddenly hit 19 million concurrent users and then climbed all the way up to 24.5 concurrent users. The usage of video games became a big way to pass time during the COVID-19 pandemic, and with cases currently still rising, many users are still looking for ways to somehow pass their time. A big reason as to why this number has been reached right now, however, is the release of Cyberpunk 2077, which brought on a total of 1 million players who downloaded the game all at once. Not only that, but the holiday season has just ended and plenty of new users are around the corner, ready to buy their new games and play.
So many factors came into this landmark record for the company. There’s no telling what kind of numbers the website will get in 2021. Steam would surely enjoy hitting that 25 million mark soon, but there would probably need to be another big game release for that to happen so quickly. With the current Winter Sale happening, that might come sooner than expected. However, no one can deny that the record is still impressive and that if video games keep trending upwards, then that new record will be hit in no time.
