Why is Steam alone among digital platforms in having a public stats page? Maybe it’s because Valve have forever relied on metrics to steer their designs toward player happiness, and continue to live by that philosophy. Or maybe it’s because the news is always, always good.
Nearly 13.5 million players were logged into Steam together on November 1st. That’s a new record, beating 10.7 million early in October, 10 million in June, and 9.5 million in May.
Is the very best of Steam in your library? Refer to our best games of 2015 list for confirmation.
Valve can thank their own partnership with DreamHack for the weekend’s Counter-Strike: Global Offensive major in Cluj-Napoca, Romania. On Sunday, EnvyUS were clawing the trophy from Natus Vincere in the final, and the tournament was streamed live in the game’s client. Of the 13,480,916 concurrent users recorded on Steam’s stat page, 790,795 were in CS:GO.
Meanwhile, Steam launched its Halloween sale, and developers were flooding their games with festive updates. The top ten most-played list was assembled from the usual suspects, though: CS:GO and Dota 2 had swapped their usual positions, ranking first and second respectively, followed by TF2, GTA V, Ark, The Binding of Isaac, Civ V, Garry’s Mod, Football Manager 2015 and Skyrim. Only Edmund McMillen’s bloody roguelike surprises there, although perhaps it shouldn’t; its long-awaited Afterbirth expansion was released on Friday.
Last time Valve talked specifics, Steam had 125 million registered users and over 6000 games. How many are sitting in your library?