Steam hits record numbers as people are forced to stay home amid the outbreak

Photo by Alex Haney on Unsplash

As Covid-19 was spreading to all the regions of the world and has been declared as a global pandemic by the Who Health Organization, many companies have let their employees stay at home and work from home, not only offices but many schools and colleges have also been closed for the time being until the situation comes under control.

Generally, there will be a spike in users on video streaming services and on gaming platforms since people are either working from home or on leave, several sports events have been called-off or postponed and the movie theaters in several cities have been closed, people have almost left with nothing to spend their free time on and seems like they're opting for video games.

Image: Steam DB

There have been postponements in productions too, which means that the next episode of your favorite TV show can be delayed, but one thing that can't be canceled or postponed are the video games which are one of the few things that people have left with to spend their free time, that's why Steam has seen a record number of online and in-game users currently.

#Steam has just reached a new concurrent online user record of 20 million, with 6.2 million currently in-game, likely due to many people staying at home due to the #coronavirus.https://t.co/bzLMfMOJvD#COVID19

— Steam Database (@SteamDB) March 15, 2020

steamdb.info shows the statistics and charts of the Steam, it also shows a live graph of concurrent players, both online and in-game and on March 15th, Steam has hit a record 20 million online players and 6.2 million in-game players, SteamDB notes that this can be the result of people staying at home because of the coronavirus pandemic.

PC Gamer notes that Steam has hit almost a million more in-game players on New Year's day 2018 when PUBG was the shiny new thing. We can also see a rise in streaming numbers on the video streaming platforms as people stay at home and the theaters were closed in many cities and will be going to in other cities and countries in the coming days.