Steam Breaks 7 Million Concurrent Users

Blah blah something about how PC gaming isn't dead blah blah master race blah blah. Steam, the PC game retailer that singlehandedly gave birth to the phrase "stack of shame", has surpassed over 7 million concurrent users. That's 7 million accounts using their Steam accounts simultaneously at its peak, with over 65 million registered users total.

This follows two previous years of growth during which Steam's concurrent numbers rose by one million over the course of 12 months.

It'll be interesting to see how these numbers are affected once Valve starts rolling out the Steam Boxes. It's possible that the accessibility of a prebuilt unit will encourage more PC gaming, as it appeals to the less computer-savvy crowd. Perhaps this time next year we'll see the numbers go up by more than a mere million.

(By the way, taking a look at Steam's stats, out of curiosity I checked most popular games list to see which titles have the most users. Far and away the answer is DOTA 2, with over half a million players at its peak. It's followed not-at-all-closely by Counter-Strike: Global Offensive at over 93,000, Team Fortress 2 at almost 68,000, Skyrim at almost 70,000 and Civ V at over 57,000.)

PCGamesN via Joystiq