https://store.steampowered.com/charts/
Peak Online: 37,185,128
Date: 2026-05-19
A new record has been reached. And I feel like Saubnatica 2 and Forza Horizon 6 are partially responsible for this new peak. I don’t see anyone talking or posting about this new logged in users of Steam.
EDIT SECOND TIME: Today it just got a new record again!:
Peak Online: 39,532,653
Date: 2026-05-23
Interesting, thanks for posting! Monday is a holiday in the US and Paralives (a highly anticipated life sim) comes out then. I wonder if it’ll have any impact. In my gaming bubble it seems like everyone is going to get it and play all day on launch, but in reality I don’t know how interest stacks up against Sub or Forza.
Paralives looks so good, but I don’t usually jump into early access. I hope the team earns enough to keep development up to 1.0, and hope that doesn’t take a decade lol.
Some of my favorite games were early access and I’ve played them the entire time really reveling in new features as they come out. Unfortunately, I think Paralives is going to be too buggy on launch even for me. I’m used to buggy life sims in general and I’ve done alpha testing of games, but from what I’ve seen I might wait for a bit. On the plus side, the dev team seems really dedicated. I’m sure they’ll keep working on it, it might just be years before I personally decide to jump in. I also don’t think a price has been announced. If it’s ~$20 I might go for it regardless because I’m sure I’ll get $20 of enjoyment out of it even with the bugs. I think $40 is likely and it’s not a bad price, but I’ll definitely wait for a few more months of fixes at that price point.
I’d admit, CA$20 would be appealing but I suspect it will be higher.
I’ve been recently watching those graphs too, and it’s mind blowing how huge those numbers are.
I haven’t really done the math, but it seems like peak times are later day in Asian countries, so I do wonder if it’s the same releases that are driving the big numbers, ie Forza and Subnautica
What’s crazy is the numbers are basically double the pre-Covid numbers. Meaning half the players on Steam today weren’t there before 2020.
The power of monopoly
It’s less the power of monopoly and more the power of the only decent platform.
Steam is great and I love what they’re bringing.
Still I’m trying to buy 50% of my games on GOG because no monopoly is good and Steam still has DRM’s and no real transparency about it.
Optional drm. Its the developers fault if there’s no transparency. Valve doesn’t enforce any drm on any game sold on steam. Its entirely and only the devs choice.
Yes I know but it would be nice to be able to know directly from Steam if a game is DRM Free or not.
Decent doesn’t mean it is not a monopoly.
After killing the competition with exclusivity deals and shoehorning itself into physical copies as DRM.
I know you weren’t born when that happened, doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.
Steam / Valve doesn’t do exclusivity deals.
Except they kinda did.
They pay publishers to use Steam as DRM for physical releases.
If you wanted to play the game on PC, you needed Steam.
Publishers used Steam for physical releases because Valve takes no fee for CD keys, so it was cheaper for them.
Got a source on them paying publishers for that?
First, this is not what you said earlier, its a different statement. Also… where do you get that Valve pays publishers to use Steam as DRM? And therefore forces them a kind of exclusivity deal? No, Valve does not do that.
They did.
They don’t need to anymore because they killed the market of physical discs for PC games.
I ask again: Where did you get that idea from? Any source other than “trust me bro” statement? Valve did not, unless you can proof your extraordinary claim with an extraordinary source.
The power of open platform
Steam used exclusivity deals and anyone selling a game on Steam can’t turn round and sell it at a lower price elsewhere.
Steam didn’t do exclusivity deals.
Go section “offers” lol Check the publisher site Look the balance
