Steam sees record breaking user levels thanks to coronavirus

With people working from home, countries on lockdown and everyone stuck for things to do, it's no surprise that more are turning to gaming. Thanks to that, Steam has now smashed its all-time record for the number of users online at one time.

The data shows that over the weekend, 20 million PC gamers were online on Steam and a substantial portion of those people were playing games too. 

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Although there are plenty of exciting PC games nearing release (including Doom Eternal) there hasn't been anything particularly exciting released in the last few days. Yet despite that, millions of people logged onto Steam and around six million of them played games on Saturday too. 

Elsewhere, gamers are also putting a strain on the internet. Italy has found that since its lockdown there's been a surge in national network usage, with an increase in more than 70 per cent in traffic thanks to people playing Fortnite and Call of Duty. 

Games represent a bigger burden on broadband, especially with everyone downloading large game updates, patches and streaming their gaming too. It'll be interesting to see if this becomes a wider international problem as the pandemic continues. Are you getting your game on more?

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