American video game developer and publisher, Valve has once again broken its own record for the largest number of concurrent players connected to Steam – 26,4 million users. In 2020, the platform set records more than once due to coronavirus lockdown, an unprecedented number of players were simultaneously online.
"While Steam was already seeing significant growth in 2020 before COVID-19 lockdowns, video game playtime surged when people started staying home, dramatically increasing the number of customers buying and playing games, and hopefully bringing some joy to counter-balance some of the craziness that was 2020," Valve said.
The current free shooter Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, with a peak online of 1,1 million players, became the leader among games. In second place is the free strategy Dota 2 – 657,000 players, in third – Rust, 224, 000 players.