Business is Booming
Steam has broken yet another user record as more people are forced into quarantine, self-isolation, or social distancing. The world economy might not be doing too hot, but that does not mean that all business is struggling right now. Steam has been on fire in 2020. It seems as though every month, Valve is breaking another of its records. Yesterday Steam had more than 22 million users on the platform at once.
It should be noted that this does not mean that there were 22 million people playing games all at once, but there were 22 million people online. The record for most people all playing at once is a shockingly low 7 million people compared to how many people are logged in at once. However, as the coronavirus problem continues to snowball, we should not rule out any of these records to be broken over the coming months. When you are not supposed to leave your house, why not play some computer games?
Steam has been around for almost 20 years and it does not look like it will be going anywhere. Despite many companies making their own online markets to directly compete with Valve, it looks as though Steam will not be dethroned for a very long time. Some things really are too big to fail. The closest thing that Valve has to a competitor on PC is the Epic Games Store. However, when you compare the numbers between the two companies, Epic Games seem to be decades off from surpassing Steam.
Valve is only a day away from launching Half-Life: Alyx. Something that is only going to increase the player counter further. If you were lucky enough to get your hands on a VR set in time consider yourself blessed. They’re almost as rare as toilet paper nowadays.