We all knew that the release of Cyberpunk 2077 was going to be a big release. I mean the game turned a profit on day one. However, it looks that and other titles have helped break the concurrent player count on Steam once again.Daniel Ahmad, a Senior Analyst at Niko Partners, posted on Twitter that the peak concurrent user record, which used to be 24.54 million players, has been broken. The new record is a massive 24.78 players.He also mentioned that this record comes right after Cyberpunk 2077 and Counter Strike: GO passed over 1 million concurrent players.

Daniel goes on to mention how the COVID-19 pandemic has affected both concurrent users and the behavior of players. Since the lockdowns began sometime around April, Steam has maintained more daily concurrent users than the highest day ever recorded in 2019. Note the graph above. You can literally pinpoint exactly when everyone had to start isolation at the end of March and beginning of April. Essentially, people are playing a lot more games at home every single day.

The video game industry has been one of the few industries to really benefit from the lockdowns. Now that everyone has had to stay inside for months at a time, people haven't had much to do. Those who have been gamers before have boughten more games. Even those who wouldn't normally play games have started to pick them up too. The amount of people I know who normally do not play games who have purchased a Switch and Animal Crossing is kind of staggering.