One of the most popular gaming stories of the year has been about the huge surge in players and concurrent players in Roblox. The gaming platform has always had a large fanbase since becoming popular, but the trick was that they never really played the games for too long, or played them at different points of the day, and thus, the “numbers never really added up.” However, thanks to a certain gardening title and others, things have become a bit more pronounced in how many people play what and at what time. For one guy named James Purrell, who claims to be a “Strategy Consultant” for the gaming platform, he states that he helped orchestrate a big-time record in July.
Specifically, on his LinkedIn Page, he said he helped it so that two of Roblox’s biggest games would have such huge surges in concurrent players that they went and broke the all-time gaming concurrent record for a platform, whose previous record holder was Steam:
“This in turn made Roblox reach 47.4M total concurrent users. That beats their July record of 32.69M – and puts them ahead of Steam’s 41.2M record 🚀 (the steam record is specifically ON steam and not in the games (they don’t track that)). Now Roblox is officially the largest gaming platform by concurrent users and also holds the record for highest CCU game in the world.”
Whether this is actually true or not is a bit up for debate, especially since we’re not sure if this Purnell guy is legit or not. He also framed things in some very specific ways, including trying to sell himself to other brands so that he could “help them,” like he’s helped this game.
If this is true, that is indeed an impressive feat. When the gardening title broke Steam’s single-game concurrent player record, that was a big deal, as that was indeed something measured on both sides, highlighting how popular that particular title had gotten. This one is a bit more abstract, but if it is true, it’s impressive…to a point.
You need to remember that most games on Steam are paid titles, while its “rival” is free to play. Plus, Roblox titles are known for being ones that you play in small bursts and then come back to later. Steam titles are more for “long-haul” game sessions, so there are levels to how much it “really means.”
We’ll see if another “record is broken” in the future, as the year isn’t over yet.
