PC Steam surpasses 37 million concurrent users for the first time ever thanks to Black Myth: Wukong

[AbsolutSurgen]

Steam surpasses 37 million concurrent users for the first time ever thanks to Black Myth: Wukong | PC Gamer

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Black Myth: Wukong helped drive Steam to a new concurrent user record this weekend.
 

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Steam has surpassed 37 million concurrent users for the first time in its history: That's 37,242,724 people connected to Valve's digital distribution platform at the same time.
 

The new record, set on August 25, represents a sharp climb in concurrent users since the beginning of 2024, when the new year ushered in a new concurrent user record of nearly 33.7 million. The number of people actually in a game concurrently has seen a comparable pop, according to SteamDB, from 10.8 million when that January record was set to more than 12.5 million at the time of this newest record.
 

Steam is a very reliable "number go up" operation as a regular thing but even so, this particular peak coming in the later days of summer—not exactly a time of peak gaming interest, I don't think—is interesting. The peak concurrent user count sailed past 36 million back in March and came oh-so-close to break 37 million in June, before sidling back down to mid-34 million peaks through most of July.

 

It's always fun to speculate about the reasons behind Steam's concurrent user peaks: Sometimes it's the holiday season, sometimes it's shitty weather, and sometimes it's a really big game. Most of the credit for surpassing the big Three-Seven, I think, has to go to Black Myth: Wukong, which launched on Steam on August 19 and quickly powered its way to the top of the charts, becoming the second-most played Steam game of all time. Its peak concurrent player count of more than 2.4 million crushed previous records held by games including Palworld, CS:GO, and Lord Ark, and now stands second only to PUBG Battlegrounds.

Those numbers are a clear reflection of the importance of China to Steam's future growth, and I have no doubt we'll be seeing more of it, driven by new Chinese blockbusters, in the future. Is a new record of 40 million concurrent users possible by the end of 2024? At this point, I would not bet against it.

[Keyser_Soze]

I've wondered after the success of WuKong what will the Chinese people migrate to next? People talked about how it was breaking Elden Ring records. What if when they finished WuKong they went to Elden Ring and that number shot up? I mean they can't just play one game and quit can they?

[AbsolutSurgen]

I think they also play a lot of Dota, CS2, and PUBG.

[Spawn_of_Apathy]

[nublood]

I’ve really enjoyed my time with it so far. And it looks absolutely stunning at times. I’m not surprised by it’s success at all. 

[eventide11]

It's a well made game that gets better the more you play. I had my reservations but after chapter one I'm pretty much in for the long haul. Some of these chapter end cinematics are stunning. Not too difficult but definitely not too easy either

[Keyser_Soze]

9 hours ago, AbsolutSurgen said:

I think they also play a lot of Dota, CS2, and PUBG.

 

But if this was true the numbers wouldn't have peaked. If they were spread out across those games they'd be there already.

 

[AbsolutSurgen]

7 hours ago, Keyser_Soze said:

 

But if this was true the numbers wouldn't have peaked. If they were spread out across those games they'd be there already.

 

If it was true, you would see those games have their concurrent users peak at 13:00 and 14:00 UTC just like BMW.

China is already the biggest market for many of the top F2P games (many of which aren't on Steam).