Steam sets new record with 9 million concurrent users

Less than three months after the last time we told you about it, a new, nicely-rounded peak concurrent user record has been achieved on Steam. During the late morning of March 15, a total of 9,068,777 people were doing their thing on Steam, all at the same time.

The entirely unsurprising big winner of the day, as recorded by VG247, was Dota 2, which peaked with more than 898,000 users. Following that was Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, with 596,000 users, and then, distantly, Team Fortress 2 with 83,000 users, Payday 2 with 81,000, and Football Manager 2015, with nearly 67,000.

Valve took no special steps to mark the momentous occasion, which was revealed through its publicly-available Steam and Game Stats page, but it has to be happy with its steady pace of growth, which has climbed from peaks of six million in late 2012 through seven million in 2013, and nine million now. That meteoric growth is likely also partially to blame for Steam's poor customer service support, which Valve has acknowledged needs to be better.

Hopefully Valve will hire some more customer support staff this year, and take a more celebratory approach when it hits the inevitable ten million mark; perhaps there will even be, finally, (wait for it) cake.

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Andy has been gaming on PCs from the very beginning, starting as a youngster with text adventures and primitive action games on a cassette-based TRS80. From there he graduated to the glory days of Sierra Online adventures and Microprose sims, ran a local BBS, learned how to build PCs, and developed a longstanding love of RPGs, immersive sims, and shooters. He began writing videogame news in 2007 for The Escapist and somehow managed to avoid getting fired until 2014, when he joined the storied ranks of PC Gamer. He covers all aspects of the industry, from new game announcements and patch notes to legal disputes, Twitch beefs, esports, and Henry Cavill. Lots of Henry Cavill.