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Steam hits 10M concurrent in-game players in record-breaking weekend
- VikingCoder 4y agoSure, but how many of them were people who set up a no-move Vampire Survivors build and just walked away? =D
- alexb_ 4y agoWarning to all HN commenters who are reading this and want to find out what "Vampire Survivors" is - clear your schedule before you try it. Crazy good game that makes you forget about time longer than 30 minute increments.
- tpxl 4y agoIt was made by a slot machine designer, and the dopamine hits show it.
- shmde 4y agoI uninstalled it today because I missed a work deadline because of it. I reinstalled it, to see the progress gone. Uninstalled it again.
- jabroni_salad 4y agoYeah, NONE of the big launchers including Steam have really perfected handling your gamesaves. I recommend this freeware to make sure they are backed up: https://www.gamesave-manager.com/ https://www.gamesave-manager.com/ Even if you have a full computer backup, it is convenient to use this since every dev has a different idea of where the data should go and this collects them all into a single directory.
- umvi 4y agoI tried it, but after a while it started to feel like "Cookie Clicker" where the majority of the time I'm just sitting around waiting for the next DPS upgrade/dopamine hit. Is there more to the game than that or am I just missing something?
- VikingCoder 4y agoI guess it depends on your "after a while." Like, there's a whole giant list of challenges. The advice I got was, don't just play a game, always go in with a goal to beat at least one of the challenges. Because opening those up reveals more challenges. Also it's fun to watch other people play and see what they're up to - Never Nathaniel on YouTube is great.
- billfruit 4y agoSurvivor!.io, seems a somewhat similar game available for mobiles.
- alexb_ 4y agoSurvivor.io is a game that completely stole the entire gameplay loop from Vampire Survivors and added garbage mobile game things to it. Vampire Survivors has a lot more, except it's completely (actually completely) free on mobile and only costs 5 bucks on Steam.
- 4ggr0 4y agoYou just convinced me to give another mobile game a try. I've tried a lot of them. But either they're free and riddled with ads and in-app transactions or they cost $5 but turn out to be quite boring or not that optimized for casual mobile gaming on the go.
- agentwiggles 4y agoThe only downside of VS as a mobile game is that runs last 30 minutes (at the beginning of the game, surviving to the end of the timer is rare, but after you've done some upgrades and know the weapon combos usually you'll make it to the end.) It works just fine to pause and come back to a run, but well... you won't want to, and all of a sudden you're burning half-hour blocks of time watching the pretty particles flash around the screen. Really great "podcast game" though. (By which I mean it will occupy your fingers while you listen to something instead of getting distracted by HN or whatever).
- mrtranscendence 4y agoPowerwash Simulator was such a good podcast game. It's a shame there aren't more levels.
- 4ggr0 4y agoI played my first run right now while watching a show, lasted 9 minutes and 40 seconds. Catchy concept, kinda like a two-axis space invaders :D We'll see how long it grabs my attention.
- mrtranscendence 4y agoI'll be honest, Vampire Survivors didn't really click with me. Maybe I'm just bad at it -- I can't seem to beat the first stage, and progress through permanent upgrades and unlocks is very slow. If I don't find garlic as my first weapon I may as well just quit and start over, but garlic starts to suck a third of the way through, so ...
- birracerveza 4y agoOne of them for sure. (Me)
- GalenErso 4y agoAmazing how a company that treats its customers respectfully, gives them what they want, avoids the usual corporate scandals and just keeps steadily delivering the goods year after year can be successful. Steam had one job. And it did it well.
- SketchySeaBeast 4y agoYup. My steam account is old enough to vote and it's never even crossed my mind to go elsewhere (exception: Good Old Games for older or self published games). The Epic Store is never going to earn my loyalty due their exclusivity deals.
- 4ggr0 4y ago> My steam account is old enough to vote Is there a secret voting mechanism on Steam that I'm not familiar with? Mine is 10 years old so I hope that it would get access to it :D
- Ekaros 4y agoSadly no. And the 18 years of service isn't even enough to automatically pass the age gates...
- the_lonely_road 4y agoNor should it be. Many of my friends handed over their steam accounts to their preteen sons. (As useless as those age gates really are being a separate discussion).
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- SketchySeaBeast 4y agoI meant, like, in local elections.
- TheRealPomax 4y agoIt's an odd metric: all it really tells us is how many people "have a game fired up", a context in which 10 million people is basically nothing compared to how many people were actually playing games over the weekend, as well as how many people's computers with steam installed are currently on and connected to the internet, again a context in which 32 million is basically nothing. Do these numbers actually give some kind of insights, or are they just the metrics equivalent of trivia?
- flohofwoe 4y agoApparently it's the highest number in Steam history, meaning active user numbers have been growing, not shrinking. That at least should put the decades old meme to rest that "PC gaming is dead" ;)
- xwdv 4y agoIt helps that this generation of consoles was so shitty and suffering from supply chain issues as well. Turned many people to PC gaming.
- dns_snek 4y agoGetting your hands on a graphics cards hasn't been easy in the past ~2 years either but I suppose it was still easier to get a hold of some PC (a laptop perhaps) that can run less demanding games than say, a PS5.
- Aperocky 4y agoThe supply chain issues seems to be resolving, just before the holiday season I got myself a RTX 3060 from bestbuy at MSRP.
- zamalek 4y agoOEM prebuilts (Dell, Alienware, HP, etc.), while a waste of good GPUs, were somewhat available during that period. Some self-builders were turning to buy those, just to get the GPU out of them. New PC gamers would have been able to at least back-order a prebuilt PC, versus playing the indefinite refresh lottery for a console.
- commitpizza 4y agoValve is so far a great company and Steam is a nice product. What they have done for linux gaming is huge and they treat their customers well. I am a happy user of Steam compared to pretty much all the other similar services that exists.
- zirgs 4y agoYup - Steam Deck convinced me that Linux is a viable gaming platform.
- commitpizza 4y agoI actually thought about buying a Steam Deck just to support it financially and then just giving it to a smaller cousin since I don't game.
- ss108 4y agoAs a Dota enjoyer, I kind of disagree, but that's just one game. I need to look up how much money it actually makes them.
- precommunicator 4y agoProbably has something to do with 6th of December being a national holiday (a.k.a. "bank holiday") in many countries.
- zamadatix 4y agoAs primarily a Steam user it always surprises me how low the platform counts are in the grand scheme of things. In particular with Steam setting itself to auto launch by default I never would have guessed the peak in game stat would peak as high as 1/3 peak logged in if I didn’t see it. Even given that though the peak concurrent player count for all of Steam is less than 2x that of Roblox alone! I always keep Steam stats as a personal example of needing to verify what you feel you know about something with actual numbers.
- Meekro 4y agoAgreed! To me and all the gamers I know, Steam (and consoles) is gaming, whereas cell phone games are that scammy market full of skinner boxes, ads, and deliberately broken games designed to milk you for money. I never would have guessed that most of the world disagrees, and cell phone game sales are probably 10x the revenue of Steam game sales.
- ramesh31 4y agoAs much as us nerds would like to think otherwise, PC gaming is, and will always be, a niche market. The average person simply does not even consider it. Computers are for work, and games are something you do on your phone or a console for the overwhelming majority of people. It's why tethered VR will never be a mainstream thing, and why Carmack was so adamant about the Quest.
- zrobotics 4y agoPlus, a gaming PC is a pretty significant investment in both time and money. Selecting parts and doing the build+software setup takes a bit of time and energy, it's far more work than just going to a store and buying a console. Plus, it takes up quite a bit more space, since it basically needs a dedicated desk. That's simply far too much effort and hassle for many people, which is why I totally understand why pc gaming is a niche.
- soylentcola 4y agoI think it's also a bit different compared to 10-15+ years ago. At least then, if you were someone in their teens through 30's, chances are - if you had a computer - that computer was a desktop computer. If you already have some random Dell or HP sitting in your bedroom or office, it's a bit less of a stretch to imagine the average person going out and buying a nicer GPU and maybe a bit of RAM for $300-500 bucks. But with the move to mobile/laptops this becomes a choice between spending that cash on an Xbox and some extra controllers, or buying a whole separate computer. I love playing on a PC (looks great on my TV!) but I can't say it would be an easy purchase if I didn't already use a fairly powerful desktop PC for other things as well.
- Ekaros 4y agoAh the idle gamers... I really should stop those games... What is the point of running your pc 24/7 through the year for some marginal or not so marginal gains not really mattering at all. Then again I doubt that it is anyway major part of the community on Steam.
- iJohnDoe 4y agoI had the wrong impression of Steam this whole time. I tried it for the first time recently. I attempted to play Bioshock. It was a game I never got to play fully when it came out. I couldn’t get it to launch at first. Had to read forums and make tweaks to the game installation files to get it to launch. I had the impression that Steam was a gaming platform that ran in its own system. That any game that was available on Steam was tested and would just work. I had the impression is was like an Xbox platform or something. I thought these games also worked on Linux and that was also part of the appeal? I tried it on Windows though. I’m sure newer games work fine. However, the appeal to me was to play some games I didn’t get a chance to play and be able to install and play without all the fuss. I have an Xbox and can get these games used, so not the end of the world.
- dayjaby 4y agogog does what you describe: refurbish good old games and make them playable on your modern computer
- rcarr 4y agoI'm trying so hard not to buy a steam deck because I'm trying to save money but every day that passes it's getting harder.
- lakomen 4y agoAll the paid bots here. Steam is a POS, it's an autocratic platform where you cant resell the games you bought, where you can't criticize without getting banned, where you have 0 rights as a customer. If that's great for you then you're a sucker.