COVID Central: Steam Shatters Usage Record Again

Last weekend, we reported that Steam and Xbox Live both had a record-breaking number of users as people flocked to video games to deal with the self-quarantine this pandemic necessitates. We also predicted that this wouldn’t be the first time that both services “enjoyed” record numbers. And we were right because that prediction was about as easy to make as suggesting the sun was due to rise tomorrow morning.

In this case, Steam, which just last weekend had reported over 20 million users over the weekend, has broken that record once again with a whopping 22 million people logging in over the same time period, mostly from the US, the UK, and of course in China as well. Concurrent players weren’t as high as last week, but with over 7 million people playing at the same time, they got close. Top games were very similar to last weekend as well, with lots of people playing Counter-Strike, DOTA 2, and Football Manager 2020, which is currently free until March 25.

If this trend continues – and we have no reason to suspect it won’t, as more and more people are forced inside and more and more people are who might otherwise not play games decide to experiment – it becomes a question of if Steam will be able to support so many players at one time.

Valve has a long history of doing nothing, but in this issue, we can only hope they buck that trend.