PC gaming platform Steam has broken another major concurrent player milestone, and this one's a big one, likely driven by the success of games like the recently-released Monster Hunter Wilds.
As spotted by the ever-reliable SteamDB, Steam passed 40 million concurrent players over the weekend, with 40,017,061 players being logged into the platform at one point yesterday. That, naturally, is an all-time record.
Back in August, the release of Soulslike action game Black Myth: Wukong helped Steam break the 37 million concurrent user barrier, so it's impressive that this weekend's total represents a three million increase on that, especially given Black Myth: Wukong's popularity.
As SteamDB points out, 12.6 million of those players were currently playing games at the time the site logged the new concurrent player record, which means around 27.4 million were either enjoying other features or idling.
Still, 12.6 million people playing games on Steam at the same time is pretty impressive, and I'm sure Valve will be happy that its digital distribution platform still doesn't really seem threatened by its increasing number of rivals.
So, what games helped Steam reach the 40 million count? Perhaps one of the biggest contributors is Capcom's Monster Hunter Wilds, which attracted over a million players at its peak, going on to become the game with the fifth-highest player peak in Steam's history.
Others include many of the usual suspects; Counter-Strike 2 has enjoyed 1.75 million players over the last 24 hours, and other big hitters like PUBG: Battlegrounds, Dota 2, and Naraka: Bladepoint all hit peak player counts in the hundreds of thousands.
In other recent Steam news, Valve has implemented a new feature that informs you if it's been a while since an Early Access game received an update, although the feature seems a little temperamental at the moment.
The latest Steam Next Fest is also underway, and our own Don has compiled a list of some of the best demos the event has to offer.
