On October 11, 43,505,724 people were on Steam at the same time. That is a new all-time record for the platform, as tracked by SteamDB. Fewer than a third of them were actually playing, though: about 14.46 million were in a game at that moment, while the rest simply had the client open, chatted with friends or browsed the store.
What people played this weekend
According to Valve's own Steam Charts as of the morning of October 12, the usual big three lead the way: Counter-Strike 2 with a 24-hour peak of 1.4 million players, Dota 2 with a million and PUBG with 713,000. The Korean MMO AION 2 is fourth with 392,000. Behind it sits a tight pack around 200,000 with Apex Legends, Deadlock, FiveM and the shooter WARDOGS, and ARC Raiders rounds out the top ten at 185,000 after its big 2.0 update.
Deadlock is now sixth
For us the most interesting line is number six. Deadlock, which Valve still has not officially released and keeps in early testing, peaked at 220,575 concurrent players over 24 hours, ahead of FiveM, ARC Raiders and Team Fortress 2. Two days ago we wrote about the game setting a player record with the heroes Baba and Solomon, and the wave clearly has not settled yet.
- What the record counts. 43.5 million is everyone online on Steam, not just players. The number actually in a game is several times smaller.
- Where the numbers come from. Total concurrent users and the record per SteamDB, per-game peaks from the official Steam Charts, the in-game figure per TechPowerUp.
- Why now. A weekend, the autumn wave of big releases and updates, and Steam remaining the main home of PC gaming. Valve has not given a specific reason.
Sources
Steam's concurrent user record, 43,505,724: SteamDB, Steam statistics page, October 12, 2026. Per-game 24-hour peaks: Valve's official Steam Charts API, October 12, 2026, 06:24 UTC. Users in game, 14.46 million: TechPowerUp, October 11, 2026.
Images: Counter-Strike 2, official Steam screenshot; Deadlock, official image.
