18h ago

Steam just cracked 40 million concurrent users for the first time⁠, meaning Valve's user count was bigger than 80% of the countries in the United Nations

www.pcgamer.com Steam just cracked 40 million concurrent users for the first time⁠, meaning Valve's user count was bigger than 80% of the countries in the United Nations

Just a milly behind Canada.

Steam just cracked 40 million concurrent users for the first time⁠, meaning Valve's user count was bigger than 80% of the countries in the United Nations

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Do nothing
Win

Gamers rise up /s

How can I apply for asylum in Skyrim?
It seems much nicer than the country I currently live in.

Hahah, what the hell is that thumbnail? Never thought I'd see Gaben do a duck-face selfie, edited or not.
- I feel like I've seen this before. I think it might be from a short film made in connection with The International some years back? Gabe used to show up in those in some fashion.
  
  I'm not sure, but I think it could be the promotional video for the Cave Johnson announcer pack for Dota, there was a bit where he was goofing around while supervising the recording.

Crazy. When I made an account in 2008, peak concurrent was around 1-2 million if I recall. A different time full of hats.

I really hope Gabe lives for another 20+ years. Steam has its issues but they are few and far between in comparison to the alternatives. And I’m afraid that when he passes, whoever takes up the mantle will go public, or sell, enshittifing the platform.
- I've got half a mind to buy on GOG instead, just to get some more assurances around access in the distant future when Gabe passes. Steam just provides such a better service with controller support and the reviews though.
  
  GOG is fine but it has a tiny library by comparison, lacks pretty much all the features of Steam, and doesn't support Linux at all.
  
  Can’t argue with that, it would be nice for GOG to have:
  Cloud saves
  A controller pass through with configuration as you described
  Those are really steam’s best features, and if GOG had those I’d likely stop buying steam games
- Are you the person that posts that under every Valve post here on Lemmy? Because they make no sense.
  Valve is a small company in terms of employees and all of them make good money already.
  They grew by not going for enshitification, and all of them know it.
  
  Yeah but think of the short term profits they could make with some enshitification, it would be enough for at least like two yachts per shareholder
  
  I doubt it, if you are concerned if I’m the person you’re thinking of you should tag me, or go through my post history.
  That being said, Gabe owns 50.1% of the company. If he dies, and transfers that to one person, it doesn’t matter what his employees think, public or private, unless the bylaws for the corporation (yes, a private company like steam is still a corporation) state otherwise, the majority shareholder can vote on future direction and win.
  Additionally, you underestimate tech employees and their willingness to exit on the right terms. If valve becomes valued at 100 billion dollars, and they can exit with their 1 percent stock at 45 years old, neither them or their family will ever need to work a day again and they can exit the global firestorm and live on an island somewhere.
  You’re putting far too much altruism on everyone.

My steam deck has pulled me back into PC gaming after twenty years of consoles and now I’m building a couch PC.

That’s an insane amount. Steam’s taking the crown.

Does anyone know how PSN and Xbox are doing?
PSN go to be higher considering it is relying on at least 2 generations? Do people still play ps3?
- Consoles are only "concurrent" when somebody is actively gaming on them, while my PC is active all day long and I might not game on it at all.
  Steam (and presumably however MS count Windows gamers) will always lead on that particular metric.
- Here is an idea. Services that are proud of their user count tend to not hide real time data.
  From what I see, there are no places where console networks share their data directly. It can only be found in financial reports or something.
- This is concurrent players, as in at the same time, I don't think console is matching that, either of them.
  
  I get PS gaming won at the end of the day but I guess it makes sense since it is a more open and modular platform.
- PSN had 129 million MAU in December 2024. Source. That’s less than Steam had in 2021 - 132 million MAU. Source.
  Across all platforms, including Xbox and PC, Microsoft reported 500 million MAU in the fiscal quarter ending June 2024. Source.
  
  The user figures are strongly impacted by the closing of Microsoft's acquisition of gaming giant Activision Blizzard
  I was sceptical of the 500m figure for Xbox (even if we include Xbox on Windows); but it makes sense if they include Battle.net figures I guess..
- PSN absolutely isn't higher. -Monthly- active users I believe is the only statistic they release though, and that will be significantly higher than concurrent on any platform.
- Yes people still play on PS3 and servers for COD games and Battlefield 4 for example are still up and active.

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