Precisely one week in the past, I discussed how Steam achieved a concurrent participant document of over 34.6 million customers. Nicely, guess what? It’s gone and topped that once more, probably owing its newest milestone numbers to the right storm of outdated video games with new updates and new video games being…effectively, new.

Within the newest statistics over on Steam itself, the variety of concurrent gamers reached 35,377,613 within the final 24 hours or so, breaking the earlier document that was set simply final week. In an period through which avid gamers really feel extra cynical and pessimistic concerning the state of the business, it doesn’t appear to be placing too many PC customers off.

Greater than 35 million gamers is a fairly stonking determine, and on the time of writing, there are over 27 million presently on-line. Who is aware of whether or not we’ll see these numbers transcend.

Is it nostalgia, democracy, or ‘Pokemon with weapons’?

It’s in all probability not too uncommon to see surges in participant counts from time to time. To see it smash by way of two data within the area of seven days is kind of one thing, although. It’s laborious to pinpoint precisely what’s behind the rise of those figures, however recently, we’ve seen the right storm of Steam successes with video games like Palworld and Helldivers 2.

Nonetheless, there’s additionally the latest EA launch of a bunch of traditional video games to Steam. Examples embody issues like Command & Conquer, SimCity 3000, and Dungeon Keeper 2, a few of which have by no means been on Valve’s digital storefront till now. Even should you didn’t decide one up and play, a few of us absolutely needed to go see it to consider it.

A fast SteamDB test reveals the surge of some “older” favorites, too. Elden Ring simply dated its Shadow of the Erdtree DLC for June, so after all, Fromsoft’s 2022 hit has fought for a spot within the prime 10 once more ever since. Stardew Valley can also be on the uptick, as developer ConcernedApe simply introduced its 1.6 replace arrives on PC later this month.

Regardless of the motive, it appears there’s in all probability a lesson to be discovered right here for anybody seeking to launch video games on PC. That’s to say, wait till the weekend after which simply unleash a bunch of much-loved retro titles and watch these numbers soar. Simple.