Steam has reached a new milestone. Since its opening in 2003, the digital platform for online gaming has touched 17 million gamers at a single point in time.

Valve Corporation's Steam has generated a lot of interest among gaming enthusiasts and now has a new reason to celebrate. An all-time greatest number of players logged into its platform to use its services.

Unwrapping The Success Of Steam

Steam over several years has registered a continuous surge in its popularity, as it touched new highs every other month. In October, the company had hit the sweet spot of 16 million gamers on its platform. Now, with the Black Friday deals for PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds, it has now accumulated a gamer base of 17,683,804, all signed up simultaneously.

SteamDB has the tracking data for its users on the platform. At present, the number of simultaneous users has touched 6.8 million. These numbers are indicating the serious activity on the site and not just idly browsing. Out of all these players, nearly 3 million are engaged in some intense multiplayer action games.

Back in 2014, Steam had announced 75 million users on its platform. By 2015, Steam declared that it has crossed the 125 million mark. Valve's Steam has become the most important place to download and play PC games. However, it is also important to take notice of things such as dormant accounts and users operating through multiple accounts. Therefore, it is not easy to precisely indicate Steam's active user base.

Another segment where Steam is doing really good is virtual reality games. According to Steam, it has at least 25 million users with have gaming rigs ready to play virtual reality games. In 2016, that figure has doubled — a good indicator of the popularity of VR in the market and that it is about to go mainstream.

Road Ahead For Steam

Valve Corporation has opened up more towards indie game developers with the Steam Direct project for more exposure. It has also made possible for the Gamers to play games that are still in development with its Early Access program. It helps the developers by providing the feedback from the users.

Steam is on a rampage with its surge in the PC gaming market and there are no signs of it slowing down.