Steam might not be the be all and end all when it comes to PC gaming platforms, but it's certainly the most impressive when you talk numbers. At one point this weekend, the gaming service had over nine million concurrent players, marking a new record for the longstanding service.
It was only the middle of last year when Steam hit a new record of eight million concurrent players, so clearly it's still coming on apace and still growing as more and more people begin PC gaming through the dedicated platform. It seems likely then that within 2015 we'll probably see it break through the 10 million player barrier without much difficulty.
The biggest games over the weekend were, as you might expect, DotA 2, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive and Team Fortress 2, which between them had almost two million players online at one point.
Although the numbers drop off quite significantly after that, other noteworthy contributors are the likes of Skyrim, which despite being on its way to a four year old game, is still at times entertaining as many as 50,000 people at once. Similarly so, Garry's Mod, which is over 10 years old is managing the same.
However, games like Evolve and Dying Light, which are only a few weeks old, have fallen right off the map, with the former having just 4,000 concurrent players at its peak and the latter no more than 15,000.
To put this into context, even Crusader Kings II, a game with one of the most notoriously difficult learning curves, is still managing nearly 10,000 concurrent players on a weekend. When you're around that sort of level and you're only just been released, something is very wrong.
