Steam broke its previous record, with 30,012,957 concurrent online users today, Sunday, October 23. This is according to Steam's own chart (opens in new tab), but SteamDB (opens in new tab) scores a bit higher, at 30,032,005.

This is roughly equivalent to the population of Ghana, the 48th most populous country in the world.

Steam has been on the rise for a long time, but has been rising exponentially since 2020, when a big wave of Covid lockdowns spiked the numbers. While it is impossible to know without exhaustive research, these gaming habits have been ingrained in some people for much longer than expected. Steam's rapid growth in recent years has far outpaced its past growth: for comparison, it took Steam 14 years to reach its peak of 15 million concurrent users in 2017, but only five years to reach the next 15 million.

In January 2021, Steam surpassed the 25 million mark after a year of rapid growth and new records. At the time, I vowed not to write any more articles about Steam's record. It was no longer news, it was the norm." With this barrier broken, it seems that Steam's numerical exploits are becoming more "inevitable" than "news.""I'll get back to you when Steam has about 30 million players," I said. (Opens in new tab)

As promised, here I am. (opens in new tab) After several years of (opens in new tab) highs, we reached 30 million. All of this was reported by my colleagues. If I sound pompous, it is because I am, and if you don't forget to do so, you will too).

And well, there you have it. An amazing new record for some of our hobby.