Valve can’t put a foot wrong these days. Sure, we’re still waiting on the Steam Machine v2.0, the accompanying Steam Frame, and new controller, but that’s due to circumstances outside of its control. Deadlock is flying and more and more players are flocking to Steam to play their games. Whether you’re an RPG nut, you’re exfiltrating from Marathon’s Cryo Archive with your buddies, or you just want a chilled time with something cozy and relaxing, Steam has it all.
After years of having a monopoly on PC gaming, Steam finally found a true rival in the Epic Games Store in 2018. Sure, some of us still like to get our DRM-free games from GOG and micro-indies from Itch.io, but Steam and Epic remain the most handy and easy-to-use launchers. That counts for a lot when you’re trying to eat up market share like it’s a delicious slice of pizza.
However, this competition has proved a boon to Steam. When faced with Epic’s alternative, Valve has upped its game by releasing the Steam Deck and building an entire ecosystem around its online store. If you’re looking to buy a new game on PC, Steam is the most intuitive, most popular, and most obvious place to start. To those of us with hundreds of games in our libraries, sunk-cost fallacy prevents us from migrating to other platforms. When you take into account that you can use Steam as a launcher for non-Steam games, it’s a no-brainer that it’s increasing its player count week on week.
It seems only yesterday that I reported on Steam setting a new record of concurrent users. In reality, that was nearly three months ago. In the time since, it has broken its own record twice, with the latest numbers from SteamDB putting it at 42,318,602 concurrent users.
Now, the same caveats apply as last time around. Not all 42 million players were actually playing games. Many of them will have just had Steam open. I imagine swathes of them haven’t changed the setting that auto-runs Steam when you boot up your PC or laptop. But still, this is an impressive feat, especially with ever-increasing competition and the Steam Machine delays. While the delays could have caused the public to lose belief in Valve, the general reaction has noted that hardware prices are out of Valve’s control and people are being forgiving – this is probably the worst time Valve could ever have announced a boxed PC.
Will Steam’s user count keep growing? Probably. That said, I suspect that fewer people are buying PCs in 2026 thanks to those price rises, both in the extremes of hardware and the general cost of living increases that don’t ever seem to stop. But consoles are facing price hikes, too, and Valve’s reasonably priced entry points to the Steam ecosystem – like the Steam Deck and, eventually and potentially, the Steam Machine – will tempt players. If the likes of Epic can’t pull players away even with the offers of free games each week, then Steam’s userbase will only grow from here.
