Steam hits 8.5 million concurrent users, shows PC gaming still has plenty of life

If measures of concurrent users are any indication, Steam is off to a strong start to 2015. As Polygon notes, the gaming service hit upwards of 8.5 million users to start the year.

As of this writing, Steam reached as many as 8,500,295 users in the previous 48 hours—a significant increase over where Steam stood a year ago. Polygon notes that Steam peaked at about 7.5 million concurrent users in December of 2013 (after hitting 7 million mere weeks earlier), and broke the 8 million mark in late June of last year. Do the math, and that’s a healthy 13 percent increase in the span of about a year. 

Steam’s growth is even more impressive when you consider that it hit the 6 million mark in November 2012, according to PC Gamer—an increase of nearly 42 percent in a little over two years.

Why this matters: Mobile gaming has gotten most of the attention in recent years, especially in non-gaming circles where hits like Candy Crush Saga and Flappy Bird became cultural phenomena. Although it’s just one company among many, Steam’s rapid growth does go to show that the PC gaming scene is still thriving—and growing. The PC may never be the center of the computing universe that it once was, but it’s probably safe to say that rumors of the PC’s demise have been premature.