2022 has been turning out to be a record-setting year for Steam as the digital games platform continues to expand its reach.
Having registered a new milestone of 28 million concurrent players earlier in the month, Steam has now returned to break that record with more than 29 million (or 29,198,370 to be exact) concurrent players at peak.
In a quick comparison for the past three years, Steam registered 17.6 million concurrent players in January 2019 which grew to 18.3 million and 25.4 million in January 2020 and January 2021 respectively. That figure has now ballooned to 29 million concurrent players and it appears likely that the magical 30-million barrier will be broken soon enough.
A highly active player-base is not uncommon during the holiday season but Steam has been seeing increased numbers afterwards, which pretty much confirms that the boost its player-count saw during COVID-19 has followed through into 2022. The pandemic and its resulting lockdowns saw a large number of people turning towards games to pass the time, helping digital gaming grow all over in general.
Elsewhere, Valve is finally all set to launch its new Steam Deck next month. The portable gaming device was originally slated for a holiday season launch but which was delayed due to various issues such as material shortages and components not reaching manufacturing facilities in time.
Valve announced last week that the first wave of Steam Decks will start shipping out by the end of February, “global pandemic, supply issues, and shipping issues notwithstanding.”
“Hundreds” of units have already been sent out to developers worldwide with more being approved. Valve wants to ensure that developers are able to make their games compatible with Steam as quickly as possible.
