If you play a game on Steam at least once a month, you're now part of a growing collective of more than 90 million gamers all over the world. This is a dramatic increase of more than 23 million since this time last year, with much of the growth coming from an expansion into more international markets, specifically with big growth in China thanks to games like PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds.
This numbers were revealed at the Melbourne Games Week, via PCGamesN, where we also learned that Steam has around 47 million active users every day, with a peak record of around 18.5 million at any one time. To give that some context, just a few months ago, in August, those numbers were more like 33 million and 14 million. That's a huge increase in a very short period of time.
The growth in Chinese gamers has been steady over the years, but really spiked over the past 12 months. DotA was the game that originally drew in big numbers, but PUBG has been the keystone of Valve's Chinese expansion in recent months. Fortnite might be king here, but in China, PUBG is the real darling and interest isn't waning there as fast as it is in more Western territories.
The reason that there was such a growth since August though, is partly to do with the time of year. Summer months tend to pull people away from their PCs, with numbers steadily increasing again as we edge towards the holiday season, which is peak gaming time for Steam players.
We would expect records to continue to be broken over the next couple of months, with new user numbers peaking in around January next year.