Steam's owner Valve reported that the online video games distribution platform had 132 million monthly active players in 2021, up from 120 million MAU in the previous year. Steam is one of the top-grossing digital gaming content platforms worldwide.

In January 2023, gaming platform and digital storefront Steam reported 33 million peak concurrent players, up from 30 million peak concurrent players in the preceding year. Steam is one of the leading platforms for digital gaming purchases worldwide.

Introduction

Steam Statistics: Steam, developed by Valve Corporation, is the largest digital distribution platform for PC gaming. Launched in 2003, Steam has revolutionised the gaming industry by offering a marketplace for buying, downloading, and playing video games. In 2024, Steam continues to dominate the PC gaming market, providing access to a vast library of games, community features, game development tools, and regular sales events. Steam has a massive global user base, with millions of active players engaging daily.

Steam's influence extends beyond being a game store. It hosts community-driven content like user reviews, discussions, and modding support, contributing to its ongoing success. Understanding the latest statistics on Steam gives insight into its impact on the gaming industry, user behavior, and future trends.

In 2024, the median number of video games played by a monthly active user on PC gaming platform Steam was four. In 2022, Steam users played an average of five games per year.

Counter-Strike 2 was the most popular game on Steam in January 2025. The tactical first-person shooter game racked up an impressive 949 thousand average concurrent players per week, which was more than competing titles Dota 2, PUBG: BATTLEGROUNDS, and Marvel Rivals did. What is Steam? Steam is one of the top-grossing digital gaming content platforms worldwide. Initially created by Valve Corporation to update games such as Counter-Strike in 2003, the service has since expanded to include games from third-party developers and publishers. The platform also offers multiplayer gaming, digital rights management, social networking, and video streaming services, drawing millions of users from around the world each day. In 2023, the number of peak concurrent Steam users hit 33 million, gaining roughtly three million users per year. Counter Strike strikes again Counter-Strike 2 is a multiplayer first-person shooter game that pits two teams of terrorists and counter-terrorists against each other in different objective-based game modes. As the fifth game in the top-rated Counter-Strike series, CS2 was released as a direct successor to Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. The game was released in 2023 as an updated version of CS:GO. In 2024, Counter-Strike 2 came third in the ranking of most played games on Steam at more than 1.7 million peak concurrent players.

Among Us Statistics: The global gaming industry market size is expected to reach $665.77 billion by the year 2030 which is a growth of 13% CAGR starting from 2023 to 2030. As technology is growing faster thus gaming-oriented platforms are attracting more users worldwide. Recently many advanced games are easily accessible through Smartphones. Among Us is one of the popular multiplayer games and mostly mobile players have made this game more popular than on other devices. These Among Us Statistics include insights from various aspects that provide light on different factors of Fast Among Us has grown over all other games and how player’s rates are shrinking recently. Editor’s Choice In the year 2022, monthly active players of Among Us were an average of 16.5 million worldwide. According to Statista, the total number of downloads in Among Us in 2022 was 530 million. Among Us was having more active players count than other popular games such as Minecraft and World of Warcraft by the end of 2022. As of January 2023, the recorded number of players is 75.6 million whereas; in January 2022 it was 217.1 million. On a monthly average, 6,058 concurrent viewers were found on Twitch in 2022. Between January and December 2022, has experienced losing of monthly active players by 7.5%, and the highest loss was observed at 26.3% in September and October of the same year. By the end of 2022, Among Us players on Steam were 7,291 across the world. On per session of Among Us, players played for about 1 hour and 48 minutes and the total average playtime per month was 21 hours and 12 minutes in 2022. The highest amount of tournament prize pool of Among Us was $30,000 in 2022.

First released in July 2013, Dota 2 is a multiplayer online battle arena that was created as a sequel to Defense of the Ancients (Dota). Published by Valve Corporation, which is also the creator of the gaming platform Steam, Dota 2 reached its record high peak concurrent player number in March 2016 at nearly 1.29 million gamers playing at the same time. In the last measured month, April 2025, the game peaked at 630,716 concurrent players. One of the biggest games on Steam With the number of monthly active users of DOTA 2 regularly exceeding 7.6 million, the game is one of the most popular on offer on the Steam platform. Dota 2 was the fourth most played game on Steam in 2024, beaten only by Black Myth: Wukong, Palworld, and Counter-Strike 2 in terms of peak number of concurrent players. DOTA 2 ranked second in terms of hourly average number of players. Big money to be won at Dota 2 tournaments As with a lot of the most popular shooter games on PC and console, there is serious money to be won by players who are at the top of their game in Dota 2. At its peak in 2021, the cumulative Dota 2 tournament prize pool worldwide stood at a cool 48 million U.S. dollars - however, the amount of prize money for Dota games has decreased significantly since then. The biggest Dota 2 tournament is The International championship, which most recently took place in Copenhagen in September 2024. The prize pool for the thirteenth edition of The International was 2.58 million U.S. dollars, a far cry from 18.93 million U.S. dollars in 2022. Still, with such sizable sums at stake, it is no surprise that viewers watch in their millions to find out who will come out on top. Nearly 1.52 million viewers tuned in to The International in 2024 to watch the Netherlands-based team, Team Liquid, take home the big prize. The 2020 edition of the tournament was cancelled due to the global coronavirus pandemic.

In January 2025, third-person hero shooter Marvel Rivals claimed the top spot of Steam's chart based on monthly active users. Another shooter title, Counter-Strike 2, was ranked second.

In September 2023, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (CS:GO) was upgraded to Counter-Strike 2. As of April 2025, Counter-Strike 2 had 1.8 million peak concurrent players on Steam, slightly down from the peak marked in the previous month. CS2 completely replaced CSGO on Steam. Counter Strike still going strong Despite the fact that CS:GO was in August 2012, the game was very popular online and has developed a cult following until its replacement by Counter-Strike 2. CS2 is the fifth game in the Counter-Strike series of games. As with its predecessors, the game takes the form of a multiplayer first-person shooter in which two teams are pitted against each other in various different game modes. After more than a decade, the game's sequel was published on Steam. Not just a game for the gamers While millions of gamers have fun playing Counter-Strike, millions more watch official tournaments online. With such a large fanbase, it is unsurprising that these eSports tournaments are worth big money. The annual cumulative tournament prize pool for the game stood at 20.83 million U.S. dollars in 2024, an increase from the previous year. Gamers are therefore in line for big paydays if they do well in these tournaments, with Danil Kryshkovets, known by his online alias donk, being the top-earning Counter-Strike 2 eSports player worldwide.

The online gaming platform, Steam, was first released by the Valve Corporation in 2003. What started off as a small platform for Valve to provide updates to its games has turned into the largest computer gaming platform in the world. The platform initially released just 65 games in 2004, but this number has progressively risen in the ensuing years, reaching a staggering 15,422 in 2024, up from 9,204 in 2020. Steam’s PC dominance When you think of PC gaming, you automatically think of Steam. With such a wide range of games on offer, from traditional online multiplayer shooters to farming simulators, there is something for every gaming taste on the platform. As a result, gamers flock to Steam in their millions, with the platform registering over 132 million monthly active users in 2021. The global nature of the platform can be seen by the wide range of languages spoken by its users. Whilst English was the most spoken language for most of the platform's history, this changed as over 33 percent of users in October 2024 claimed Chinese as their platform language. Steam’s biggest games Counter Strike 2 was the most popular game on Steam during 2024. The first-person shooter averaged almost 685,000 players per hour, a significant lead over its successor, Counter-Strike 2. The game was also third among the 2024 list for peak number of concurrent players — CS2 reached over 1.74 million players in a single hour in its peak, with Black Myth: Wukong claiming first place with over 2.4 million peak concurrent players.

Analysis of ‘Steam Player Data’ provided by Analyst-2 (analyst-2.ai), based on source dataset retrieved from https://www.kaggle.com/jackogozaly/steam-player-data on 12 November 2021.

--- Dataset description provided by original source is as follows ---

Context

This dataset contains the average players by month for the current top 100 games. It was scraped off https://steamcharts.com/top and converted into this easier to analyze format.

--- Original source retains full ownership of the source dataset ---

First released in July 2013, DOTA 2 is a multiplayer online battle arena game that was created as a sequel to Defense of the Ancients (DotA). Published by Valve Corporation, which is also the creator of the gaming platform Steam, DOTA 2 had an estimated 7.6 million monthly active users worldwide in February 2021. The MAU figure peaked back in June 2016, when an average of over 13 million players enjoyed the game every month.

DOTA 2: Steam giant DOTA 2 is one of the most successful games on Steam. The game reached nearly 795 thousand players in a single hour in its peak in 2020, beaten only by the battle royale classic, PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds, Cyberpunk 2077, and CSGO. It was also beaten only by CSGO based on the hourly average number of players on the gaming platform - an impressive 427.99 thousand players enjoyed DOTA 2 on Steam during an average hour in 2020.

DOTA 2 tournaments The biggest DOTA 2 eSports tournament worldwide is The International. The first edition of the tournament took place during Gamescom in Cologne, Germany back in 2011. The International 2019 was held at the Mercedes-Benz Arena in Shanghai and was the biggest eSports tournament of all time based on the overall prize pool of over 34 million U.S. dollars. In fact, all five of the top eSports tournaments of all time were editions of The International, highlighting its importance in the eSports universe. Given the sums of money up for grabs, it is no wonder that viewers in their millions are engrossed in the action. The International 8 in 2018 attracted approximately 14.96 million concurrent viewers in peak moment. These viewers watched professional DOTA 2 eSports team, OG, take home the grand prize, narrowly beating PSG.LGB in the Grand Finals. The 2020 edition of The International was postponed to 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic and is set to take place in Stockholm, Sweden.

In April 2025, cross-platform online game Rec Room counted approximately 2,044 peak concurrent players on Steam, down from 2,339 peak concurrent players the previous month. Launched in 2016, Rec Room is a virtual reality online game where players can interact and engage in multiplayer games. The platform can be used either with a VR headset for a full 3D experience, but it is also available for PlayStation, PC, and mobile.

In 2023, the global PC gaming market generated approximately 80.27 billion U.S. dollars worth of revenue. Despite the growing console and mobile gaming genres, in 2028, the segment is projected to increase to 141.92 billion U.S. dollars in annual revenues.

In April 2025, vehicular soccer video game Rocket League reached a peak of 33,993 concurrent gamers on Steam. This is down from the all-time high of 146,902 peak concurrent users in September 2020.

In March 2025, PUBG: Battlegrounds was the most popular game published by the South Korean video game company Krafton, with ************ monthly active users (MAU) across Xbox, PlayStation, and Steam. The real-life simulation game inZoi ranked second, with around *********** MAU, while games such as Subnautica and The Callisto Protocol were less popular.

Destiny 2 is an online multiplayer first-person shooter game which was first released for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One in September 2017. Whilst the game was initially available on Windows the following month, it only became available on the online gaming platform, Steam, some two years later in October 2019. In the first month of its release on Steam, the game peaked at 292,314 concurrent players worldwide. Destiny 2 reached a peak of 49,891 players gaming at the same time in April 2025.

First released on February 25, 2022, action RPG Elden Ring was instantly a hit, reaching 952,523 concurrent peak players on PC gaming platform Steam within a week of release. Elden Ring is an action RPG release by Dark Souls developer FromSoftware. The highly anticipated title was created in collaboration with fantasy author George R.R. Martin, who provided the lore for the game's setting. As of April 2025, Elden Ring's monthly number of peak concurrent players had declined to 62,189.

First released at the start of 2017, PUBG: Battlegrounds (previously known as PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds) is one of the most popular games on Steam and had 861,598 peak concurrent players in the last recorded month, April 2025. The highest number of concurrent players was recorded in January 2018 at 3.24 million. One of the biggest games on Steam PUBG gained a devoted legion of fans in a short space of time after its release, and cumulative unit sales of the game hit 75 million in December 2021. The game has also been critically acclaimed — it won the Best Multiplayer Game at The Game Awards in 2017 and its free-to-play mobile version for Android and iOS, released in 2018, was nominated for Best Mobile Game at The 2018 Game Awards. This critical success has also translated into commercial success, as the game generated millions of U.S. dollars of revenue, most successfully in the United States. On January 12, 2022, the game has become free to play. Battle of the Battle Royale games PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds is an online battle royale game in which up to 100 hundred players battle it out until there is only one player or one team left standing. This format of game has become very popular in recent years. While PUBG has a strong following, especially on Steam, it has come under pressure from rival battle royale game, Fortnite. First released just several months after PUBG, Fortnite has since become a cultural phenomenon, amassing 500 million registered users in just six years. As of 2025, both PUB and Fortnite are still going strong with their loyal audiences.

In the second quarter of 2023, Blizzard Entertainment gaming titles were accessed by 26 million monthly active users. Blizzard Entertainment, owned by Activision Blizzard, is the publisher of the Warcraft franchise which includes MMORPG classic World of Warcraft. Other major titles created by Blizzard include the equally long-running Diablo dungeon crawler series and science fiction title StarCraft. Hero shooter Overwatch was Blizzard's most recent new IP release in 2016 and the company released a mobile Diablo game in June 2022.