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PC Gamers Accumulated Over 20 Billion Played Hours On Steam Alone In 2019
Valve has released the latest data on Steam gameplay for 2019, reporting that Steam users played for more than an astounding 20 billion hours in the year. The popular PC gaming platform has long been a place to easily buy and try new games, but 2019 appears to be a particularly successful year for Steam.
Part of Steam's annual Year in Review, the reported playtime was the capstone to Valve’s announcement of all the many ways that people can experience Steam, including SteamVR, Steam Play for Linux, Steam Remote Play, and other methods that Valve released throughout 2019. As the company proudly noted, the nearly 21 billion hours of play is almost enough time for an astronaut to make it to the Andromeda galaxy at light speed… although, of course, most of these hours were spent concurrently with other Steam players.
The 2019 Year in Review released by Steam also unveiled a host of other interesting facts in addition to the information that players racked up a total of 20,789,726,718 hours of playtime. Some notable mentions include:
- Around a million push notifications are sent via Steam Mobile Chat every day.
- Steam now sees around 70,000 reviews every day, which is an increase of 300% compared to last year.
- More than 2.3 million people now use Steam Remote Play.
The report also contained information on the Steam projects that were begun in 2019, as well as what Steam will be focused on for 2020 – including more SteamVR work, a focus on sharing and supporting game soundtracks, and Steam’s “Café” program for schools and libraries.
The latest reports give indications of just what people were spending so many hours playing on Steam last year. The top selling Steam games for 2019 included Rainbow Six Siege, Monster Hunter: World, Dota 2, Warframe, The Elder Scrolls Online, the ever-present Grand Theft Auto 5, and PUBG, among others. In fact, all the best sellers for the year had some form of multiplayer and online play… with one interesting exception. Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice also made the highest rank, another accolade for single-player game that won Game of the Year at The Game Awards 2019. It no doubt helped that EA also made a late-year announcement bringing its games back to Steam, including the popular Apex Legends and Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order.
These numbers are impressive on their own, but they’re important for another reason, too. Steam now has some growing competition with Epic Games Store, a direct competitor that spent 2019 nabbing very controversial timed exclusives while offering developers attractive revenue splits to draw in more titles. Epic’s exclusivity model has seen success, but these Steam numbers underscore that Valve certainly isn’t going anywhere. On the contrary, Valve has started 2020 in a particularly strong spot with a lot of irons in the fire – and it will be interesting to see where the Steam platform goes next.
