There are not only economic losers of the corona crisis. In addition to streaming portals such as Netflix and supermarket chains, part of the gaming industry is also profiting from the current exceptional situation. Steam, for example, was able to achieve a new visitor record at the weekend. The same applies to the other gaming platforms.
High player numbers at Steam
Valve will have been happy about the new record of the weekend. The successful gaming platform was able to announce a new milestone with approx. 20.3 million users. This large number of players was online simultaneously on Sunday. A similar situation was also observed with the online service of XBOX. In the last few days, XBOX Live has recorded an exceptionally high level of user activity. This is not least due to the constantly spreading coronavirus. Due to quarantine, people are either forced to stay at home or do not even want to come into contact with the new virus.
double win for Valve
A glance at the figures for the weekend around March 15 will certainly have made the heart of Valves CEO Gabe Newell beat faster. The Steam Database counted a total of 20,313,476 users logged into Steam at the same time. The already successful gaming platform was thus able to record a further success. In times of the increasingly successful Epic Games Store, the new record is certainly important. But Valve was not only able to break another record with its gaming platform. The in-house shooter Counter Strike: Global Offensive (CS:GO) also set a new user record. More than 1 million users played CS:GO simultaneously.
The other winners
Call of Duty has also been able to achieve amazing figures with its new subsidiary Call of Duty: Warzone. In less than a week, the new Battle Royale Shooter has registered more than 15 million players. Also XBOX Live was able to register a huge rush. Phil Spencer, who currently heads the XBOX department at Microsoft, was also pleased about this. He immediately took this as an opportunity to thank the people who keep XBOX Live running despite the crisis. Although no information is available for Sony’s online service PSN, the numbers here are likely to have risen similarly.
Cause research is not difficult
Of course, the high number of users can be attributed to the currently rampant coronavirus. While in some countries only quarantine forces people to “stay at home”, in other countries there is already a general curfew. As a consequence, many people spend their time with games. Since all schools in Germany have now been closed, the number of young users in this country is also likely to skyrocket. It remains to be seen what gains the gaming platforms will make as a result of the crisis.
