Black Myth: Wukong is the first Steam game to surpass 37 million concurrent users.

Steam has reached 37 million concurrent users, a first in its history. That's 37 242,724 people who are connected to Valve’s digital distribution platform simultaneously.

The new record was set on August 25. It represents a sharp rise in concurrent users from the beginning of 2024 when the new year brought a new concurrent user records of almost 33.7 million. SteamDB reports that the number of people playing a game simultaneously has also increased from 10.8 millions when the January record was set, to more than 12.50 million at this latest record.

Steam is a reliable "numbers go up" operation on a regular basis, but this particular peak, which came in the latter days of summer -- not exactly a peak gaming interest period, I don't believe-- is interesting. The peak concurrent users counted over 36 million in March, and was so close to breaking 37 million in June. It then slid back down to mid-34 millions peaks for most of July.

Steam's concurrent users peaks are always interesting to speculate on. Sometimes it's holiday season, other times it's bad weather, and other times it's just a big game. Black Myth: Wukong deserves the most credit for surpassing Three-Seven. It launched on Steam on 19 August and quickly climbed to the top, becoming the second-most-played Steam game ever. Its peak concurrent players of more than 2.4 millions surpassed previous records held by other games such as Palworld, CS:GO and Lord Ark. Now, it is only second to PUBG battlegrounds.

These numbers clearly reflect the importance of China for Steam's growth in the future. I have no doubt that we'll see more of this, driven by new Chinese blockbusters. Is it possible to reach a new record by the end 2024 of 40 million concurrent users? I wouldn't bet against it at this point.