Steam is a video game distribution platform.
Launched in 2003, the service has gained popularity among gamers across the world.
Today, it has more than 120 million monthly active users and a catalog of over 50 thousand games.
Read on to find the latest Steam stats for 2021. Here’s a quick overview of what you’ll find on this page:
Top Picks
- Steam has 120 million monthly active users.
- 62.6 million people use Steam on a daily basis.
- The Steam catalog in the US includes 50,361 games.
- Steam users logged 31.3 billion hours of playtime in 2020.
- PLAYERUNKNOWN’S BATTLEGROUNDS holds the record for the most concurrent Steam players, peaking at 3.26M.
Steam monthly active users
Steam has 120 million monthly active users (MAUs). The active user base has grown by 26.31% over the past year, adding 25 million new monthly active users in 2020.
The number of monthly active players on Steam has increased 1.79x since 2017.
Here’s a table showing Steam’s monthly active user growth since 2017:
| Year | Monthly active users |
|---|---|
| 2017 | 67 million |
| 2018 | 90 million |
| 2019 | 95 million |
| 2020 | 120 million |
Source: Statista.
Steam daily active users
Steam has 62.6 million daily active users. An increase from 47 million daily users in 2018. More than half (51.99%) of MAUs access Steam at least once a day.
Source: Valve.
Steam peak concurrent users
26.85 million users concurrently accessed Steam at one point on 21 March 2021, marking an all-time peak to date.
The average daily peak for March was 25.65 million concurrent users. That’s a year-over-year increase of 29.35%.
We’ve charted the growth in Steam’s peak concurrent user count since January 2007:
| Date | Peak concurrent users |
|---|---|
| January 2007 | 285 thousand |
| January 2008 | 619 thousand |
| January 2009 | 1.5 million |
| January 2010 | 2.5 million |
| February 2011 | 3.17 million |
| February 2012 | 4.67 million |
| February 2013 | 5.79 million |
| February 2014 | 6.92 million |
| March 2015 | 8.58 million |
| March 2016 | 11.35 million |
| March 2017 | 12.25 million |
| March 2018 | 16.45 million |
| October 2019 | 14.8 million |
| January 2020 | 16.26 million |
| March 2020 | 19.83 million |
| June 2020 | 20.59 million |
| October 2020 | 21.86 million |
| December 2020 | 23.96 million |
| January 2021 | 24.67 million |
| February 2021 | 25.38 million |
| March 2021 | 25.65 million |
Source: SteamDB.
Total hours played on Steam
Steam users logged 31.3 billion hours of playtime in 2020. Playtime has grown by 50.55% over the last year, outstripping the 26.31% growth in MAUs.
Source: Valve.
How many new games are added to Steam each year?
Developers added 10,263 games to Steam in 2020. That’s a record number of game releases and an increase of 27.76% over the previous year.
Here’s a table showing the annual number of Steam game releases since 2004:
| Year | Game releases |
|---|---|
| 2004 | 7 |
| 2005 | 6 |
| 2006 | 71 |
| 2007 | 112 |
| 2008 | 183 |
| 2009 | 356 |
| 2010 | 276 |
| 2011 | 283 |
| 2012 | 379 |
| 2013 | 565 |
| 2014 | 1,771 |
| 2015 | 2,964 |
| 2016 | 4,207 |
| 2017 | 7,049 |
| 2018 | 9,050 |
| 2019 | 8,033 |
| 2020 | 10,263 |
Source: Statista.
Steam US library
Steam’s US library contains 92,196 titles across all categories. This includes add-on content like DLC, mods and soundtracks.
50,361 games are available on Steam as of March 2021.
Source: Steam.
What are the most played games on Steam?
Ranked by all-time peak concurrent users, PLAYERUNKNOWN’S BATTLEGROUNDS is the most played game on Steam.
Counter-Strike and Dota 2 round out the top 3.
Here’s a complete list of the top 15 most played games on Steam:
| Game name | All-time peak concurrent users |
|---|---|
| PLAYERUNKNOWN’S BATTLEGROUNDS | 3.26 million |
| Counter-Strike: Global Offensive | 1.3 million |
| Dota 2 | 1.29 million |
| Cyberpunk 2077 | 1.05 million |
| Valheim | 502 thousand |
| Terraria | 490 thousand |
| Fallout 4 | 473 thousand |
| Life is Strange 2 | 469 thousand |
| Among Us | 447 thousand |
| POSTAL | 412 thousand |
| World of Warships | 379 thousand |
| Grand Theft Auto V | 364 thousand |
| HITMAN™ 2 | 361 thousand |
| Kathy Rain | 334 thousand |
| Monster Hunter: World | 320 thousand |
Source: SteamDB.
Steam games by genre
The Steam library includes 32,712 indie games, more than any other genre. Action and adventure are also popular categories, each with over 17,000 titles.
We’ve charted the number of games on Steam by genre:
| Genre | Number of games |
|---|---|
| Indie | 32,712 |
| Action | 19,571 |
| Adventure | 17,092 |
| Simulation | 8,904 |
| Strategy | 8,888 |
| RPG | 7,801 |
| Sports | 2,265 |
Source: Steam Spy.
SteamVR
SteamVR is a dedicated tool for playing Steam games using a supported VR headset.
There were 104 million PC VR sessions on Steam in 2020. The average session time was 32 minutes.
The company claims that 1.7 million users tried SteamVR for the first time last year.
The Steam catalog includes 3,870 VR-only games (7.68% of total game count) and 4,571 games that support VR.
Source: Valve.
Steam users with VR headsets
Steam survey data suggests that only 2.3% of users have VR headsets.
Among Steam users who do own VR headsets, more than half (52.28%) use a version of Facebook’s Oculus headset.
Here’s a breakdown of Steam users with VR headsets:
| VR Headset | Share of users |
|---|---|
| Oculus Quest 2 | 24.25% |
| Oculus Rift S | 20.96% |
| Valve Index HMD | 16.37% |
| HTC Vive | 12.24% |
| Oculus Rift | 7.07% |
| Windows Mixed Reality | 6.5% |
| Oculus Quest | 5.74% |
| HTC Vive Pro | 2.27% |
| HTC Vive Cosmos | 1.02% |
| HTC Vive Elite | 0.98% |
Source: Steam.
Steam users by OS
The vast majority (96.17%) of Steam users access the service on Windows.
Here’s the full breakdown of Steam users by operating system:
| Operating System | Users |
|---|---|
| Windows | 96.17% |
| OSX | 2.98% |
| Linux | 0.85% |
Source: Steam.
Video cards among Steam users
75.41% of Steam users on PC have a video card made by NVIDIA. AMD and Intel account for a further 24.46%.
Here’s a comprehensive overview of PC video cards among the Steam user base:
| Brand | Share |
|---|---|
| NVIDIA | 75.41% |
| AMD | 16.18% |
| Intel | 8.28% |
| Other | 0.13% |
Source: Steam.
Steam app download stats
The Steam mobile app was downloaded 1.5 million times across iOS and Android in March 2021 alone. Google Play accounted for 53.33% (800 thousand) of total downloads, and the remaining 46.67% (700 thousand) came from the App Store.
All-time Android downloads of the Steam app exceed 50 million.
Steam also has an affiliated chat app, Steam Chat. The app was installed 60 thousand times in March 2021. More than 1 million total users have downloaded Steam Chat on Android.
Sources: Sensor Tower, Google Play.
Conclusion
That’s all for my 2021 Steam stats roundup.
The video game platform has consistently grown its user base since launching almost two decades ago.
As with other gaming-related services, Steam saw an increase in usage during the pandemic. Do you think the platform can maintain this momentum? Or will it suffer as the world reopens?
If you have any questions about the stats included here, I’d be more than happy to provide clarification. I’d also love to hear any general feedback: it helps me make these roundups even better.
So please get in touch in the comments below.