Steam Next Fest is now live, offering access to over 1,000 game demos

Valve has launched the latest edition of Steam Next Fest.

The week-long digital event, which offers access to over 1,000 PC game demos, is running until February 12 at 10am PT / 1pm ET / 6pm GMT.

Next Fest includes demos for some of Steam’s most wishlisted games including Pacific Drive, Stormgate, Backpack Battles, and Rotwood.

In addition to demos, Valve says Steam Next Fest will include dozens of livestreams offering players the chance to chat with developers about their upcoming games.

Steam’s next major seasonal sale, its Spring Sale, will run from March 14-21.

A record 14,535 games were released on Steam in 2023, up roughly 2,000 from the previous year’s count, according to analytics site SteamDB. So far this year, 1,384 games have been released on the digital distribution platform.

Steam broke its record for concurrent users last month. As noted by SteamDB, Valve‘s service reached an all-time high of 33,675,229 online users on January 7.

Steam first passed 30 million concurrent users in October 2022, and its previous peak of 33,598,520 users came in March 2023.

When it set its latest record for concurrent users, 10,653,243 players were in-game.

Further reading

6

Palworld has surpassed Counter-Strike’s concurrent player record on Steam

Only PUBG: Battlegrounds has attracted a larger number of concurrent players

The concurrent users stat is the one most often cited in reports because it’s the higher number, but this also includes users who are signed into Steam but aren’t playing anything and just have the client software running in the background.

The concurrent in-game players stat, on the other hand, denotes how many people are actually actively playing games at the same time.