Yesterday, Valve's leading PC games distribution platform, Steam, reached a new user concurrency record. As confirmed by SteamDB, at 14:00 UTC, Steam surpassed 42 million concurrent users.
The previous record (41.6 million users) was set in October 2025, but the platform has been on a steady growth trajectory for years now:
- 40 million users (March 2025)
- 38.3 million users (September 2024)
- 37.2 million users (August 2024)
- 36 million users (March 18, 2024)
- 34 million users (March 3, 2024)
- 33.6 million users (January 2024)
- 30 million users (October 2022)
- 29.2 million users (January 2022)
- 27.3 million users (November 2021)
- 26.3 million users (February 2021)
- 25 million users (January 2021)
- 20 million users (March 2020)
- 17.6 million users (November 2017)
A quick data analysis reveals distinct growth phases during this period. Before the pandemic, the Steam platform was growing slowly, at a rate of +4.5% per year. The lockdown year obviously exploded the platform (as well as all other gaming platforms) with +31.5% in a single year, followed by a stabilization phase and the current phase, which are both between 13.9% and 12.6% annual growth rate, well above the pre-COVID trajectory.
| Phase | Period | Start | End | Growth | % Growth | Annual Growth Rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pre-COVID | Nov 2017 → Feb 2020 | 17.6M | 20.0M | +2.4M | +13.6% | +4.5%/year |
| COVID | Mar 2020 → Feb 2021 | 20.0M | 26.3M | +6.3M | +31.5% | +31.5%/year |
| Post-COVID | Mar 2021 → Oct 2022 | 25.0M | 30.0M | +5.0M | +20.0% | +13.9%/year |
| Beyond COVID | Nov 2022 → Jan 2026 | 30.0M | 42.0M | +12.0M | +40.0% | +12.6%/year |
Notably, unlike the Epic Games Store, which also experienced significant user growth (+173% over six years) but failed to increase third-party game sales revenue (only +1.6%), Steam is also meaningfully growing its revenue. According to estimates shared last week by Alinea Analytics, December 2025 was the best December yet for Steam, with the platform generating over $1.6 billion last month. This represented a 22.7% increase over December 2024 and comfortably beat the gross revenue of $1.4 billion generated by Steam in December 2020 during the height of the pandemic.
Long story short: Valve owner Gabe Newell might soon be able to celebrate with another superyacht, because why not?
About the author: With over two decades of experience in gaming journalism, Alessio Palumbo has led the gaming vertical at Wccftech since August 2015. He started working at a young age for Italian websites like Everyeye.it, Gamestar.it, Nextgame.it, and Multiplayer.it before kickstarting the indie English-language publication Worlds Factory as its founder and Editor in Chief. In the last decade, he has coordinated the overall output of Wccftech's gaming section, managed PR relations, assigned reviews, produced daily news coverage, edited gaming content as needed, and delivered game reviews. Arguably, his trademark content is the long series of exclusive developer interviews that have been cited by Wikipedia and by the biggest news media and gaming publications. His passion for technology also makes him knowledgeable when it comes to gaming hardware and tech. His favorite genres include RPGs, MMORPGs, and action/adventure games.
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