Of course, the information comes from SteamDB. 8.5 million were playing a game at the time, according to the raw statistics published by SteamDB. However, this is not a record since, on Monday, February 14, 2022, approximately 9.3 million Steam users were playing games. On Valve’s platform, it was a historic start to the year as Steam first passed 28 million users before exceeding 29 million on January 24. However, the increasing pattern goes back to the epidemic era. The platform set several new milestones in 2020, and on January 3, 2021, it reached the milestone of 25 million concurrent users. Some of you may remember that Valve first released it as a client in September 2003 so they could sell their games and provide title upgrades. The game Half-Life 2, out in November 2004 and the first to need Steam even for retail sales, was unquestionably the game’s killer app. However, it would be a few more years before major publishers like CAPCOM made their presence on Steam known. The following year, Valve started permitting third-party game releases on the shop. As they say, the rest is history. Several of the biggest publishers recently launched their digital storefronts, including EA’s Origin, Ubisoft’s UPlay, and Microsoft Store. They also tried to make their new games unique to specific locations by pulling them from Steam, even though Activision Blizzard, Microsoft, and EA have made a comeback. On the other hand, Ubisoft hasn’t launched a new game on Steam in two years, choosing to distribute them on its platform and the Epic Games Store, now Steam’s primary rival. Regardless of the rising competition, this expansion also creates opportunities for new entrants in the gaming sector, who may flourish, given the public’s growing interest in gaming. However, anyone who wants to compete with steam has to implement something even better. Let’s celebrate Steam’s success while we still can.
