The most popular gaming platform in the world Steam broke a new record. There might be some competitors with Steam such as Epic Games Store. But Steam is still the biggest platform. Steam’s new record is 20 million live players. The news was announced by Steam Database. The reason for this record is the global Coronavirus epidemic. Many countries around the world are affected by Coronavirus. We know also gaming is affected because expos like E3 are canceled. Even big leagues such as the NBA are canceled. But it seems like it worked in favor of Steam.
Since January 2020 Coronavirus is affecting more and more. Even schools are canceled in many countries and borders are closed. People who stay at home prefer to game generally and this pushed Steam’s live player counts. When you are at home and their no school generally young people choose to play games. As the numbers continue to rise, we will probably see more and more records coming from games and gaming platforms because of the Coronavirus. According to experts, we did not see the worst yet.
#Steam has just reached a new concurrent online user record of 20 million, with 6.2 million currently in-game, likely due to many people staying at home due to the #coronavirus.https://t.co/bzLMfMOJvD#COVID19
— SteamDB (@SteamDB) March 15, 2020
Steam did not make a special thing to gather people around but simply players are staying indoors most of the time to avoid contact with other people. Currently, the gaming world was not expecting a crisis like this. Esports got hit hard as many tournaments are canceled and some will be only available online without an audience.