Steam Player Count - How Many People Are Playing?

26,385,194 Players Online

You are viewing the live Steam player count on PlayerCounter. Come back to this page when you want the latest update on live Steam players or an update to show the most recent number of players online. *Ad blockers may prevent stats from updating; please allowlist us.

The more popular a game is, the more frequent the number of players online can change as new players start and others end their gaming session. Special announcements by Valve, the game developer, or tournaments by famous players can affect how many people are playing Steam right now.

The number of active players you see above is the closest estimate of how many people are playing Steam all over the world in real-time; this figure is estimated using our Gohost Network Protocol technology, otherwise known as GNP.

About Steam

Steam is a digital media delivery platform developed by Valve Corporation. It was released in September 2003 as an application designed to streamline installing and playing PC games. In addition to providing a centralized location where users can download and play games.

Valve decided to develop the platform, which provides automatic updates and implements stronger anti-cheating and anti-pirate security features. The platform also allows developers to distribute their products through the service. Since its release, Steam has grown into one of the largest online gaming platforms in the world.

Valve announced plans to create an open-source version of Steam dubbed Open Source Distribution (OSD). OSD would allow users to install games without paying, similar to how freeware works.

Valve also released SteamOS, an operating system designed specifically for running Steam applications. The company later added native support for Linux games through Steam Play, allowing users to play Linux games on the platform with no additional setup. The success of the platform has helped develop the Steam Machine hardware lineup.

At launch, Steam Cloud played only supported games played through Nvidia’s GeForce Now game streaming platform but would be expanded to include other cloud platforms in the near term. More About Steam.