The last several years have seen Steam—the primary digital platform for most PC gamers—steadily growing in terms of users. According to SteamDB, the platform has now hit a new milestone, having reached 42 million concurrent users. The graph depicting Steam’s growth, which you can check out below, also indicates the steady but consistent upward trajectory of the platform since it first came out in the 2000s.
As can be seen in the graph, Steam had already been seeing a respectable level of growth, and 2020’s Covid-19 pandemic seems to have played a major role in accelerating this. Since many were stuck inside their homes because of lockdowns all over the world, gaming across just about every platform saw considerable growth, and Steam undoubtedly benefited from this. At the time of publishing, the number of concurrent users has stabilised a bit, with almost 30 million users online right now.
Interestingly, reports of Steam seeing growth in user numbers go back quite a few years, with one from 2013 discussing how its 6.6 million concurrent users at the time was a 300 percent jump over the preceding year.
As for what these millions of users are playing right now, free-to-play titles like Counter-Strike 2, Dota 2 and PUBG: Battlegrounds continue to dominate the most-played charts, with premium games showing up as you go down the list. These premium games include ARC Raiders, Grand Theft Auto 5 Enhanced, and Stardew Valley. Aside from ARC Raiders, the most recent release in the most-played list right now is Elden Ring: Nightreign, which is currently ranked at 22. Battlefield 6 is further down the list, at rank 28.
Moving further into the first month of 2026, a look back at the November-December period of the previous year reveals that Embark Studios’ ARC Raiders closed the year out by being the top selling game of the two-month period. Other titles in the charts include the award winning Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, Dispatch, and Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2.
Aside from being a generally decent storefront thanks to its various sales, Steam’s growth in users likely also steps from the fact that Valve has been active in releasing new features for the platform over the years. These range from built-in cloud saves to family account and game sharing to an immense level of controller and peripheral compatibility through Steam Input, and even mod support for games through Steam Workshop.
Valve has also been growing its user base thanks to the release of the Steam Deck, and the platform will likely see yet another growth spurt once the Steam Machine is finally released. The Steam Machine, along with the new Steam Controller and the Steam Frame were unveiled just a few months ago. The Steam Machine will be a Linux-based pre-built gaming PC that was made using “semi-custom” AMD CPU and GPU, and will run on Valve’s own SteamOS. The Steam Frame, on the other hand, will be a VR headset that is capable of streaming games directly from your system regardless of whether or not it’s a VR game. If you’re curious, here’s everything you need to know about Valve’s hardware announcements.
