Steam broke its concurrent user record twice over the Thanksgiving weekend

Steam broke its record for concurrent users twice in a row over the Thanksgiving weekend.

Valve‘s service reached an all-time high of 27,182,165 concurrent players at 9am ET / 2pm GMT on Saturday.

This record was then quickly broken at the same time the following day, when the peak hit 27,384,959.

The record marks the highest number of players logged into Steam at any one time. Of these players, around 7.8 million were flagged as actively playing games at the time.

This peak is likely due to the combination of Thanksgiving weekend, the launch of the Steam Autumn Sale on November 24 and the various Black Friday sales from other publishers leading to widespread game discounts.

The service saw a huge surge in active users in March 2020, as governments around the world started advising its citizens to stay at home and avoid socialising as lockdowns started due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

During that period, the service broke records by hitting 19 million and 20 million concurrent users on March 14 and 15, followed by 22 million the following week.

Daily peaks have rarely dropped below 20 million in the year and a half since, but this past weekend’s numbers marked its highest point yet.

Steam launched its annual Autumn sale, which coincides with Black Friday, on November 24.

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The sale, which features discounts on thousands of games, runs until 10am PT / 1pm ET / 6pm GMT on December 1.

Valve recently delayed the launch of Steam Deck by two months to February 2022.

In a statement released last week, the company blamed the slip on global supply chain issues. “Due to material shortages, components aren’t reaching our manufacturing facilities in time for us to meet our initial launch dates”, it said.