Steam Breaks 7.6 Million Concurrent Users Over Christmas Weekend

[Josh Engen]

Steam Breaks 7.6 Million Concurrent Users Over Christmas Weekend

Last weekend, 7.6 million gamers simultaneously avoided spending Christmas with their families.

Well, it looks like Valve had a very merry Christmas. Over the weekend, the publisher managed to log 7.6 million concurrent users, which was more than eight percent higher than the previous record.

The record breaking weekend was obviously spurred by Valve's holiday sale [http://store.steampowered.com/], which has been slashing prices on games like Black Ops 2, Hitman Absolution, Metro: Last Light and Fallout: New Vegas. Plus, Valve was generous enough to make Left 4 Dead 2 entirely free on Christmas day.

Dota 2 continues to be Steam's biggest title. At any given time, about half a million people are typically playing the free-to-play MOBA. Left 4 Dead 2 is Valve's second place winner, averaging about one hundred thousand players. And Counter-Strike: Global Offensive picks up the bronze medal with about 75 thousand players.

Historically speaking, the console market has been significantly more profitable than the PC market, but the industry has been fluctuating. And once Valve's Steam Machines start hitting the market, companies like Sony and Microsoft may need to switch to a stronger deodorant.

Source: Steam [http://store.steampowered.com/stats/]

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[Metalrocks]

damn xmas sales. got my self more games then i originally wanted. but it was worth it.

 

[Shadow-Phoenix]

Good news on the users doing what they wanted to over Christmas which was to enjoy gaming but why did you feel the need to add that paragraph near the end?, I mean all that has done is just allowed for people to come in here and flamebait.

Could have just edited that last part out since it's really not needed at all unless you're going for obvious click bait.

 

[Artemis923]

I spent the whole weekend playing War of the Roses and Crusader Kings II.

Missed the free Left for Dead, though. T-T

 

[antidonkey]

Well....I wasn't able to play anything as I was in a location with terrible internet access but thanks to the android app, I was still able to take advantage of sales. I'm not sure how I feel about that.

 

[Andy Shandy]

I assume this means that it also counts as Steam's upper limit as well, considering the problems that people had? =P

But seriously, Steam's done quite well this year, pretty sure there's been a few records broken this year, if I recall correctly.

 

[Sigmund Av Volsung]

Yeah this sale is not as good as the summer one was: in that one, F:NV Ultimate Edition was £3.74 when it was on daily deal, now it's at £5.09(considering I don't have a lot of money to work with, this is really annoying).

The deals in general aren't amazing, the only noteworthy thing this time was that I finally got L4D2 for free, and Fall of The Samurai, which is an embarrassing amount of fun for me.

 

[Charli]

Everyone in my family got steam games for xmas. I was being tight as hell but then again I have very little spare money to live on.

Starbound, F1 Racer, Bioshock Infinate and Bejeweled 3 were all fairly decent gifts in my eyes. Plus my sister got Theme Park Hospital as a fun little nostalgia trip, she used to love micro managing games and that was a frequent.

Thanks steam, here's to another year. My how time flies...

 

[Akisa]

No wonder why steam was having problems.

 

[urlorjkron]

I made some corrections for you:

7.6 Million Concurrent Users Break Steam Over Christmas Weekend

Last weekend, 7.6 million gamers simultaneously avoided spending money on Steam.

 

[weirdee]

I think a good portion of that activity was people camping in the steam market to sell cards and watch item prices.

 

[unstabLized]

*Buys game that I was eyeing for a while* Alright, that's it for this sale. Got everything I needed :3
Steam: What? How dare you? Open your wallet right now you two piece whore! *Whips*

Ahhh Steam.. I'll never stop loving you <3.

 

[oldtaku]

No wonder why steam was having problems.

Steam was doing fine right up to the point they had the incredibly dumb idea to give away L4D2 for free and imply that you had to install it to keep it. I think it could have handled the 7.6M people with no impact otherwise. And it did except for that one sad morning.

 

[Strazdas]

Christmas weekend? have they been having same problems out there with questioning days? Christmas didnt happen over the weekend, and if you mean weekend after christmas it has nothing to do with staying with your family.

No wonder why steam was having problems.

Steam was doing fine right up to the point they had the incredibly dumb idea to give away L4D2 for free and imply that you had to install it to keep it. I think it could have handled the 7.6M people with no impact otherwise. And it did except for that one sad morning.

It wasnt a dumb idea. It was a great stress test for the upcoming steamsoles