Online gaming sees 22% rise in March

• Top five Steam games see rise of 37,059 users from February to March
• Football Manager has all-time high of 189,230 users in absence of live football
• 22% rise in players on Steam’s top 20 games since February

Online gaming platform Steam has seen a 22% rise in users on its top 20 games in the past month, reveals new research.

The past month has seen a massive rise in people playing games, with online gaming platform Steam seeing a 22% spike in people playing their top 20 games in the past month when compared to figures from February.

Research by OLBG’s Gaming Habits study breaks down the data behind Steam’s top six games, studying their average player statistics at any one time in previous months when compared to March 2020, the rise and fall of the figures in those months and the peak number of players during that time – something which went through the roof in March.

When studying games Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, Dota 2, Grand Theft Auto V, Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege and Football Manager, the average player count on each game was on average 289,366 at any given time, up 14% from the previous figure of 252,307 in February.

Over these five games, that’s a gain of 37,059 users in the space of a month.

These figures differ even greatly on a wider scale when compared to a wider selection of the Steam library. Between December – February, the average player count per month was just 97,966 across the top 20 games available on Steam, but that figure rose by 22% in March, to an average count of 115,709.

Counter-Strike: Global Offensive was the game that saw the biggest spike in users, with a massive 23.36% rise in people playing the game in March, going from 543,979 in February to 671,033 in the space of a month – a gain of 127,054 and peaking at 1,145,972 players at once on Tuesday 31 March at 8pm.

Football Manager has been another game which has seen a spike in popularity, thanks in part to Sport Interactive’s decision to offer the game for free to Steam users for a two week period.

Between December – February) the average player count for Football Manager 20 was 44,897, but that figure shot up by almost 60% in March to 76,022 – with an all-time high of 189,230 people playing it at 5pm on Sunday, 30 March.

For more detailed analysis and visual representations of the trends in online gaming, visit: https://www.olbg.com/blogs/growth-esports-popularity