Steam player count has jumped by 23 million in less than a year

October 23, 2018 Steam player count has topped 90 million monthly active s.

Steam now has over 90 million monthly active s, up from 67 million in little over a year. Valve's client remains one of the most popular places to get digital PC games, and that popularity is expanding worldwide – particularly in places like China, where local law can put heavy restrictions on what players have access to.

The latest stats were shared at Melbourne Games Week, and the current stats also include over 47 million daily active s and a new peak concurrent record of 18.5 million. Those stats are up from 33 million daily and a peak of 14 million concurrents back in August.

So what's changed since GeekWire reported those numbers last year? China, for one thing. According to Asian game industry analyst Daniel Ahmad, Valve's service has more than 30 million s there. That interest started with Dota 2, but has grown even more over thanks to PUBG sales numbers – as Niko Partners reports (via South China Morning Post), over 15 million copies of the battle royale have sold in China.

Notably, Steam saw a significantly higher percentage decline in s over the summer than is typical. Steam Spy creator Sergey Galyonkin notes that this year's summer decline sees numbers going down by 17%, compared with 9% last year. Based on three years of data at SteamDB, Steam tends to see counts peak annually in January, decline or simply stangate in the summer, and reach new heights at the start of the new year. If we have a much larger decline this summer, it means Steam's usual rate of growth is slowing down.

https://twitter.com/GamesWeekMelbs/status/1054539574091767809

Or, perhaps, the numbers are simply paying the price for Steam's massive peaks earlier this year – which may again be related to PUBG, and its own declining player count. But that decrease alone isn't enough to for this summer's current decline.

Either way, it looks like Steam's still on a high overall, and with growing interest worldwide it's unlikely Valve's grip on the PC market is loosening any time soon.