With the pandemic situation around the globe, most companies and educational institutions are urging people to stay home. The trend has drastically increased the number of concurrent users on movie streaming services and obviously on Steam, the PC game streaming platform. Counter Strike Global Offensive and Dota 2 witnessed a massive increase in the number of players last weekend.
Based on a stats revealed by Digital Trends, the service Steam had 20.3 million which is the highest ever in its recent history. The service recently had over 18M and 19M users in the past weekends but once again the records are broken.
Counter Strike: Global Offensive was the most played game with over 1 million players playing it at a time. Following in second place was Dota 2 with 701,632 players concurrently online and playing it followed by a host of other titles.
Games including Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege, Playerunknown’s Battlegrounds, Grand Theft Auto V and Destiny 2 were among them. A similar trend could have happened in other games too like League of Legends and UPlay, Origin streaming services. The numbers are yet to be revealed for other services but Steam is one of the largest and oldest platforms that hosts a whole lot of games. And, it is no wonder it became the primary choice for players to spend their weekend at home.
Numerous events related to the technology, gaming and automobile industries were cancelled in the past weeks. Some of them will be streamed online while others have decided to keep their launch events directly as public gatherings would risk the spread of COVID19. While a lot of global issues continue to prevail, the entertainment industry on the digital front provides a respite for those who need to take a break from the severity of the situation.