Steam Reaches 40 Million Concurrent Players for the First Time After Monster Hunter Wilds Launch

Steam, Valve’s popular PC games storefront, has crossed 40 million concurrent users for the first time. Propelled by Monster Hunter Wilds’ wildly successful launch on February 28, the platform surpassed the milestone over the weekend, logging over 40 million players online. Steam has seen an upward trajectory in the number of players and set a record of 39.9 million users in February.

Steam Hits 40 Million Concurrent Players

The platform reached a peak concurrent user count of 40,270,997 on Sunday, breaking its previous record and crossing the 40 million mark for the first time in its 21-year history. According to SteamDB charts, the number comprises 12,812,379 players in-game — another record for the storefront.

Steam reached the milestone on the back of the launch of Capcom’s Monster Hunter Wilds on February 28. The action-RPG, which was released across PC, PS5 and Xbox Series S/X, hit one million concurrent players on Steam on the first day of its launch, becoming one of the most played games of all time on Valve’s platform.

The game surpassed all-time peak player counts of popular games like Cyberpunk 2077, Elden Ring, Hogwarts Legacy and Baldur’s Gate 3. At the time of writing, Monster Hunter Wilds is now the fifth most played game of all time on Steam, behind only PUBG: Battlegrounds, Black Myth: Wukong, Palworld and Counter-Strike 2.

Steam remains the most popular PC games storefront ahead of Epic Games Store and Microsoft store. Earlier this month, Epic had reported that its daily active users peaked at 37.2 million in 2024. This number, however, is different from concurrent player count, which refers to number of players online at the same time on a platform.

Epic Games Store’s average daily active user count was 31.5 million in 2024. The Steam rival also crossed the milestone of 295 million Epic Games Store PC users in the last year.