Grand Theft Auto V’s not even been out for 24 hours and its already taken the number three spot on Steam’s top played chart, sitting behind Dota 2 and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. That’s impressive but what’s even more impressive is the sheer number of players.
At one point 295,000 people were all playing concurrently. That’s a record for a non-Valve game.
We’ve been looking through the likely competitors for their peak player numbers on Steam. Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 topped out at 70,000 concurrent players, Skyrim peaked at 78,000, and Civilization V at 91,000.
Not only does this mean that GTA V looks to hold the record for most concurrent players on Steam (outside of a Valve game) it may make it the most successful PC launch ever. Dota and CS:GO built up their player base gradually over years, at the beginning they were quite small titles. GTA V’s got there in a day.
The Steam numbers are only part of the story. People who bought their copy through other outlets won’t be picked up in Steam’s stats. That could potentially be a large number of players considering stores like Green Man Gaming were selling GTA V for £10 less than Steam.
Hopefully Rockstar will release some numbers in the future.