Steam Sale (Photo : www.gamesradar.com)
Steam recently broke its own record for the number of concurrent users logged in on January 1, beating its console rivals PlayStation Network and the Xbox Live after the two digital games service experienced technical difficulties.
The digital store of Valve, the developer of the iconic "Half-Life" videogame, broke its previous record of 8,020,700 concurrent users logged in Steam during its annual Summer Sale in June 2014.. On January 1 at 11:10 AM, Steam hit the 8.4 million mark, with 8,500,245 users, according to its Game and Player Statistics page.
According to Game Spot, the number of concurrent users peaked most likely because of the holiday season as PC gamers had more time to sit back and enjoy video games on their computers. Steam also had its annual sale, possibly adding to the traffic of users logged in.
The Steam annual sale puts thousands of PC titles on sale for up to more than 80 percent off on the original price. The games on sale rotate every 12 up to 24 hours, giving the PC gamers some pressure on whether to buy a certain game or wait for a better deal.
Still, the most played game on Valve's online service is DOTA 2 with around 880,000 players. This is followed by Counter-Strike Global Offensive with its more than 383,000 players.
SMNWeekly reports that Steam hit the 100 million milestone in active accounts, according to Valve. The number grew from 75 million active user accounts from January 2013.
The Sony PlayStation Network and the Microsoft Xbox Live online platforms were victims of hackers calling themselves the "Lizard Squad," BBC reported.
