Steam hit a new peak of users online today, crossing 41M CCUs

People seem to be overlooking that its important to know who these concurrent users are and what they are playing.
If a large contingent of these "new" users are migrating in from, for example, mobile as opposed to consoles then what you are going to a shift towards is servicing that demographic's tastes.

The problem I have with a lot of PC fanboys is that they are so fixated on trying to prove their superiority over console players they are missing the fact that PC gaming is a very broad church and that producers will always head towards where the market is. So if Gacha/F2P stuff is seen as the thing because it creates a bump in CCU, then that's what there's going to be more of.

Face it guys, what we're actually talking about here is the dreaded "E"-word, ENGAGEMENT, and more of that is only a good thing for people looking to sell you shit, not the state of the industry.
You said it yourself, PC has appeal to a very broad demographic. Just look at the most popular new games on Steam this past year. A whole bunch of different genres and game types. Gauhati/F2P will always be popular, but it's not the only thing that is extremely popular. On both Steam and consoles.
 
People seem to be overlooking that its important to know who these concurrent users are and what they are playing.
If a large contingent of these "new" users are migrating in from, for example, mobile as opposed to consoles then what you are going to a shift towards is servicing that demographic's tastes.

The problem I have with a lot of PC fanboys is that they are so fixated on trying to prove their superiority over console players they are missing the fact that PC gaming is a very broad church and that producers will always head towards where the market is. So if Gacha/F2P stuff is seen as the thing because it creates a bump in CCU, then that's what there's going to be more of.

Face it guys, what we're actually talking about here is the dreaded "E"-word, ENGAGEMENT, and more of that is only a good thing for people looking to sell you shit, not the state of the industry.
PC gamers think PC gaming is superior, not that themselves are superior. The "PCMR/console peasants" is a joke started by console warriors themselves. 🤦‍♂️
 
People acting like this is the second coming of gaben because a number went up again.
Half of that is people with Steam minimized while they watch YouTube.
Don't let the this fool you, this isn't 41 million gamers...

Valve isn't doing anything revolutionary here either. No new features, no real competition, they are a monopoly.
PC gaming stronger than ever, sure thing. Meanwhile, it's the same 10 live service games carrying the entire thing.
41M? Half of those users are just background processes and crappy sub PS4 gaming rigs in sleep mode. And bots too.
These numbers are fake.



 
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Remember, there is information being shared that PC gaming is shrinking. No idea why there is this information being shared, as globally PC gaming is growing at a much greater rate than consoles....

..but hey ho, data is easy to manipulate.
 
Mind Blowing to be honest. It's crazy I remember being on Steam very early with Half Life 2 in 2004 I think. I remember them starting to add games a couple of years later outside of the valve stuff. I was a massive Team Fortress fan back in the day more so than Half Life.

It's wild how they seemed to just organically become the biggest gaming company yet still keep the fans on their side.
 
You said it yourself, PC has appeal to a very broad demographic. Just look at the most popular new games on Steam this past year. A whole bunch of different genres and game types. Gauhati/F2P will always be popular, but it's not the only thing that is extremely popular. On both Steam and consoles.

The crux for me is whats happened to the mobile space over the past 15 or so years.

When phone games first appeared the notion was that anyone could make a game and do well in this huge, nascent market. Within a few years the market got flooded and devs started to focus on marketability and discoverability more than content, with insane effort being expended on crafting storefront icons that popped and generally present visuals that appealed to this new market.

Roll on a few more years and while the market continued to grow, it became apparent that the overwhelming majority of the revenue generation was coming from a handful of products and genres. After which point the money was only ever interested in funding titles that would compete/displace the incumbents in these already carved-out but hugely lucrative market spaces.

An approach that has since spread out to all other areas of gaming, as they chase the same sub-demographics much to the displeasure of traditional gamers, who (accurately as it happens) have perceived their interests to have become marginalized.

Just saying; more CCU is not necessarily a win for gaming.
 
PC gamers think PC gaming is superior, not that themselves are superior. The "PCMR/console peasants" is a joke started by console warriors themselves. 🤦‍♂️


Here's the origin of the glorious PCMR meme (timestamp), when Retard McSmackypants had trouble playing Witcher.
Its usage is 100% ironic, but woke era couch-fainting over "master race" still lingers.
 
1. Chinese gamers don't count
2. F2P revenue doesn't count, but it counts for PSN
3. CCU's and numbers going up are actually a bad thing

Only thing not being accounted for in this thread is the prankster uncles installing Steam on old ladies computers
 


To put it in perspective 33M was the record in early 2024



incredible growth in the last 5 years or so. I would've guessed it would peak during Covid then slide a bit.


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Please notice that most of these 41M users simply have Steam running in the background (pretty likely auto loaded when booting windows and minimized) while they aren't playing.

The blue line of the graph (13M recent peak) are the ones actually running Steam to play something.

Consoles days are numbered, kids don't care about them and adults prefer PC.
In your dreams. Console market continues growing year after year and the size of both console and PC markets is pretty similar in size. Only Xbox days are numbered, PS and Nintendo are breaking record numbers.

And kids prefer to play in mobile, not in PC. And when they play on PC, their most played game is Roblox, that isn't available on Steam.

PC is the real future of gaming.
Lol, no. PS, Nintendo and mobile are growing faster than PC.

The far more interesting question is where, geographically and demographically is this growth coming from?

Because I highly, highly doubt its driven by established Western markets.
I think by far it comes from people who already had Steam, but bought a new PC, installed Steam there and didn't notice or doesn't care that now installing Steam it autoboots each time you run the PC, so counts as active user for the 41M number even if not playing anything or not using Steam. It's just running in the background unless you kill it and go to disable its autoboot.

Geographically, minimum around a third users are Chinese as of today. China is also a a fastest growing market in other gaming platfroms, so may be from there.

Demographically, I assume may be the same as the average Steam player. Games for kids don't sell a shit in Steam and kids love Roblox, Fortnite or LoL, which aren't in Steam. So mostly adults, in PC and console the biggest group by far is the 20-40 years old, taking over half of the population. Regarding gender, in PC there are a majority of males with a not too big distance.

Here you have an Steam representative talking about language usage in Devcom (Gamescom)
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Edit: from that talk "From 2020 to 2025, Japan, Brazil, China, Germany, and the U.S. emerged as the fastest-growing markets. Japan's growth is especially notable in light of its console-heavy history, while the U.S. market continues to expand despite its maturity."
 
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People acting like this is the second coming of gaben because a number went up again.
Half of that is people with Steam minimized while they watch YouTube.
Don't let the this fool you, this isn't 41 million gamers...

Valve isn't doing anything revolutionary here either. No new features, no real competition, they are a monopoly.
PC gaming stronger than ever, sure thing. Meanwhile, it's the same 10 live service games carrying the entire thing.
41M? Half of those users are just background processes and crappy sub PS4 gaming rigs in sleep mode. And bots too.
These numbers are fake.

Your post is funnier when I read it pretending you are rofif impersonating Trump
 
Please notice that most of these 41M users simply have Steam running in the background (pretty likely auto loaded when booting windows and minimized) while they aren't playing.

The blue line of the graph (13M recent peak) are the ones actually running Steam to play something.


In your dreams. Console market continues growing year after year and the size of both console and PC markets is pretty similar in size. Only Xbox days are numbered, PS and Nintendo are breaking record numbers.

And kids prefer to play in mobile, not in PC. And when they play on PC, their most played game is Roblox, that isn't available on Steam.


Lol, no
You said it yourself. Not available on Steam. I'd wager a not insignificant number of those with Steam open but not playing a Steam game could easily be playing something from the Epic store (Fortnite/Genshin for example), GoG, Xbox store, Roblox, Steam China (separate client), or Battle.net. A ton of PC players keep Steam open while playing a game from another store. So the CCU of people actually playing PC games at any one time is quite a bit higher than that 13 million number.
 
I think by far it comes from people who already had Steam, but bought a new PC, installed Steam there and didn't notice or doesn't care that now installing Steam it autoboots each time you run the PC, so counts as active user for the 41M number even if not playing anything or not using Steam. It's just running in the background unless you kill it and go to disable its autoboot.
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Who even needs rofif? This is gold
 
Completely false. The ONLY way the green line and the blue line would grow at the same rate is if all the new users (green) were from the same region. The reason the green line is far outpacing the blue is because the new players are in new regions, like China, which means they'd be playing during different peaks. This whole idea that Steam just magically appears on every new PC and people don't know how to stop programs from starting at boot is one lamest copes of all time.
Why are you making shit up? The cumulative window is greater than 24hours in that graph.
That's creative, rofif, but let's keep it somewhat real.
Which bit is creative? Look for me on the league table. I'm not rofif
 
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Number of users with Steam installed is a valid metric. Obviously doesn't mean everyone online is playing a game, but can't play Steam games without Steam installed and running. So that number is growing. Don't get what is controversial about that.
 
I'm kind of glad I loaned my Steam Deck OLED to my 13 year old. He loves it, and he's not even worried about getting a hold of my Switch 2. We're both happy campers.
 
It isn't gold, it's just a fact. The 41M is people running the Steam app. the 13M is people playing games on Steam.
It is, but "getting new PC" doesnt make any sense because they would still be the same user unless they created a new account on it for some odd reason. Anyway you're right about the steam app running in background on boot though and the cumulative there not meaning much especially as a PC has several other uses (we use to take the piss out of MS xbox MAU for less for counting Windows phone and solitaire back in the day) but people are getting touchy about it for steam. Steam is even transparent about the more important metric which is ingame.
 
Your assertion that it's people downloading Steam for no reason when they buy new PCs and simply letting it run in the background constantly is hilarious.
I never said people downloaded Steam for no reason, you moron. People obviously install Steam because they need to do so to play some game. But once installed by default it autolaunches, and when you run it to play a game, by default Steams keeps running minimized (visible in the hidden icons next to the Windows clock, or in the task manager) after you close the game unless you manually disable the autoboot and to really close it after you shut down a game.

This is why Steam reports separatedly the CCUs of people running the Steam app (41M current peak, green line in the graph) and people actually playing games on Steam (13M current peak, blue line in the graph).

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It is, but "getting new PC" doesnt make any sense because they would still be the same user unless they created a new account on it for some odd reason. Anyway you're right about the steam app running in background on boot though and the cumulative there not meaning much especially as a PC has several other uses (we use to take the piss out of MS xbox MAU for less for counting Windows phone and solitaire back in the day) but people are getting touchy about it for steam. Steam is even transparent about the more important metric which is ingame.
The thing is Steam originally didn't autoboot, so people who installed it many years ago don't have it that way. But if reinstalled Steam recently (like when buying a new PC or after reinstalling Windows) then that same old Steam user would count more time as active user of the Steam app when not playing (green line) but would count the same amount of time he/she did as CCU actually playing a game (blue line).

If you look at the Steam usage chart, you'll notice that the line that shows the CCUs that just are running the app grew way faster in recent years than the one of CCUs that are actually playing a game:

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In fact, notice that in the graph both lines are proportional until the covid bump (marked in the graph), that is when a ton of people bought a new PC, and from there the difference between both lines keeps getting bigger, with the one about running the app growing way faster than the one (that grows well, but not that fast at all) of people actually playing.

It was at 5 million in-game 6 years ago. It's more than doubled as the CCUs increase.
In this talk mentioned that in 5+ years the app's CCU peak went from over 20M to over 40M:

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In fact that year during the covid bump peaked at 24.5M for the app CCUs and 8.2M for people playing games CCUs:
image.png


So in 5+ years grew from 24.5M to 41.6M for the app CCU peak and from 8.2M to 13M for people playing games CCU peak. Pretty impressive.
 
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Impressive until you realise that individual 'games' within Roblox get 20+m CCUs and then you start to question everything you thought you knew about gaming and the generation coming up that don't value almost anything we do.
 
Impressive until you realise that individual 'games' within Roblox get 20+m CCUs and then you start to question everything you thought you knew about gaming and the generation coming up that don't value almost anything we do.

Roblox isn't on Steam though, right?
 
Impressive until you realise that individual 'games' within Roblox get 20+m CCUs and then you start to question everything you thought you knew about gaming and the generation coming up that don't value almost anything we do.

Exactly this. I think there's a massive disconnect between what we perceive as "success" is around here, and what the industry considers it to be.

Which should be of concern as it really matters what the prevailing metrics are for business.
 
Exactly this. I think there's a massive disconnect between what we perceive as "success" is around here, and what the industry considers it to be.

Which should be of concern as it really matters what the prevailing metrics are for business.

What does Roblox have to do with Steam numbers?
 
Impressive until you realise that individual 'games' within Roblox get 20+m CCUs and then you start to question everything you thought you knew about gaming and the generation coming up that don't value almost anything we do.
Your generation didn't value it either. Reality is gaming as we know it was never incredibly popular (at least compared to what these live service games garner). Mario 64 for example, which i'm pretty sure we all remember as some big deal, sold in its life-time around as much as Elden Ring sold in three weeks.
 
I never said people downloaded Steam for no reason, you moron. People obviously install Steam because they need to do so to play some game. But once installed by default it autolaunches, and when you run it to play a game, by default Steams keeps running minimized (visible in the hidden icons next to the Windows clock, or in the task manager) after you close the game unless you manually disable the autoboot and to really close it after you shut down a game.

This is why Steam reports separatedly the CCUs of people running the Steam app (41M current peak, green line in the graph) and people actually playing games on Steam (13M current peak, blue line in the graph).

r1755627826358466.jpeg



The thing is Steam originally didn't autoboot, so people who installed it many years ago don't have it that way. But if reinstalled Steam recently (like when buying a new PC or after reinstalling Windows) then that same old Steam user would count more time as active user of the Steam app when not playing (green line) but would count the same amount of time he/she did as CCU actually playing a game (blue line).

If you look at the Steam usage chart, you'll notice that the line that shows the CCUs that just are running the app grew way faster in recent years than the one of CCUs that are actually playing a game:

Untitled.png
Steam doesn't start minimized, it will always pop in your face every boot. And people can play non Steam games while Steam is running.
 
Roblox isn't on Steam though, right?
I think his point is that Roblox alone with 20M+ CCU is larger than the 13M CCU on steam playing every game available there and that puts things into perspective regarding what we value.
If you look at the Steam usage chart, you'll notice that the line that shows the CCUs that just are running the app grew way faster in recent years than the one of CCUs that are actually playing a game:


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Yeah I know, I said as much in my own post before. I thought you were saying that it's the same person upgrading PCs (new PC) but I think I misunderstood what you meant by "new PC". It's new steam users regardless of PCs being old or new. It just doesnt matter much though with the way that metric is counted on boot.
 
I think his point is that Roblox alone with 20M+ CCU is larger than the 13M CCU on steam playing every game available there and that puts things into perspective regarding what we value.

Eh.....ok,I guess. Not really what the thread is about.
 
The Steam Deck OLED and seasonal Steam Sales converted me. All I'm interested in nowadays is news on either a Valve designed Steam OS box for my TV or the Steam Deck 2.
 
Roblox isn't on Steam though, right?
You are correct. My point was that in the grand scheme of things Steam could be seen as a niche platform. Hopefully there will always be a healthy market for quality games on PC, and hopefully Valve remains a profitable and independent company.
 
You are correct. My point was that in the grand scheme of things Steam could be seen as a niche platform. Hopefully there will always be a healthy market for quality games on PC, and hopefully Valve remains a profitable and independent company.

Wouldn't go so far as to call Steam "niche", but probably closer to that than consoles. Not being backed by a massive corporation catering to the whims of stockholders is definitely among the endearing traits of the platform, to me anyway.
 
I like consoles and always have. There's something nice about turning one on and playing without worrying about drivers or settings. But the growing pushback against PC gaming lately is honestly crazy to me.

PC gaming is, if anything, more consumer friendly than it has ever been. You can buy games from multiple stores instead of one locked in ecosystem. You can mod at your own pace instead of being forced to buy new hardware every generation. You can also run mods on games to an extent you can't on consoles. Sales are deeper, preservation is easier, and you are not tied to whatever a platform decides to delist next week.

It's fine to prefer consoles since convenience is a real value, but acting like PC gaming is some elitist or anti consumer niche in 2025 just feels off.
 
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Nah....isn't relevant

Its entirely relevant when the figure in question isn't total users, but concurrently active users.
Its a measure of time more than anything else.

So the question is, who's time and what specifically is taking it up ?

You can't draw conclusions without understanding what the data represents and therefore how to interpret it.

Just going "big number is now much bigger" and concluding "PC gaming is bigger and more popular than ever", isn't wrong exactly, its just not very illuminating by itself... Beyond the easy bragging-rights aren't you at least a bit interested in the nature of this growth phenomenon, and how it may influence the future of gaming generally?
 
Its entirely relevant when the figure in question isn't total users, but concurrently active users.
Its a measure of time more than anything else.

So the question is, who's time and what specifically is taking it up ?

You can't draw conclusions without understanding what the data represents and therefore how to interpret it.

Just going "big number is now much bigger" and concluding "PC gaming is bigger and more popular than ever", isn't wrong exactly, its just not very illuminating by itself... Beyond the easy bragging-rights aren't you at least a bit interested in the nature of this growth phenomenon, and how it may influence the future of gaming generally?

Only reason I responded to you was because I didn't understand why Roblox was being brought into it. That's what was irrelevant.
 
Why do you laugh, you idiot? The 41M is people running the Steam app. the 13M is people playing games on Steam.
Steam is more than just a gaming platform. Steam is also a massive forum and mod database. Just because you don't play a game at the moment, doesn't mean you aren't active doing shit somewhere else on Steam. People use Steam as a chat client, too.

Are we really implying that 28m are bots or people just running Steam in the background without using it? This is retarded.
 
Does Steam also handle the networking for multiplayer games, as in provides a framework for it, or it's just a software launcher? Because impressive as the number is one thing is having 40m people running in your infrastructure with messages back and forth between all those players and another is a ping to tell a server you are playing something (I'm talking from a programming / software point of view only).
 
Steam is more than just a gaming platform. Steam is also a massive forum and mod database. Just because you don't play a game at the moment, doesn't mean you aren't active doing shit somewhere else on Steam. People use Steam as a chat client, too.

Are we really implying that 28m are bots or people just running Steam in the background without using it? This is retarded.
Dudes an icon-era brother in arms, expect retardation
 
Valve isn't doing anything revolutionary here either. No new features, no real competition, they are a monopoly.
And which PC launcher has more features than Steam? There might not have been anything new in the last few months, but SteamInput has been an ongoing project for years and was instrumental in SteamDeck existing and being a success.

Steam collects free money just by existing, but you can't tell me anyone else out there is offering more.
 
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