There are a few different reasons that could amount to the lower user numbers of the past few months. Steam always peaks during January and then sees a user drop during the Summer, though this year has nearly doubled last year’s 9% decline. Another possible explanation could be the fall of such popular titles as Player Unknown’s Battlegrounds, as Twitter user Steam Spy pointed out. While still one of the hottest titles on Steam, the game simply doesn’t break records like it used to, being so popular that it passed up DOTA 2 and helped set new Steam User records.
Even then, PUBG’s lower popularity doesn’t quite account for such a steep decline in usage. It’s always possible that fans are simply turning to other websites and services to buy and play games. Take, for instance, EA, which recently launched Origin Access Premier, a service that allows users to play EA’s entire library for $15 a month.
Even websites like Humble Bundle and GOG, both of which regularly sell DRM-free versions of games that wouldn’t require users to log onto Steam. It is, of course, also possible that people simply have less of a desire to play games on their computers, or simply any games at all, instead opting to go on vacations or binge-watch Netflix.
Despite the decline, fans of the service should have no reason to be alarmed. Steam is still the biggest player in the PC market by a massive margin, so Steam won’t be going anywhere anytime soon, but that probably still means it’ll be long gone by the time Half-Life 3 makes it to the market. Jokes aside, the decline is still an interesting one. It may simply be an anomaly in a booming gaming industry, but it will still likely draw plenty of doom-callers to the internet.
Source: Steam DB
