It's difficult to keep a straight face and say that PC games are dying when Steam just registered its biggest number of concurrent players, 11.6 million.
Steam is the largest digital distribution platform and it's impossible to dispute that. Valve, the company behind Steam, is not listed at the stock market, and it's privately owned, which means that we don't really know how much money they are making.
There are some estimates out there, which could be correct or not, but that's not the point. The platform has been growing at a steady pace and it's now difficult to match in size and scope, but not for the lack of trying.
We keep hearing all the time how PC games are a dying breed and how the future belongs to the couch players, but that's not reflected in the market. Yes, it's true that the sales of PCs have been slowly decreasing over the past few years, but the number of PC gamers is increasing. This is somewhat of a paradox, at least taken at surface value.
The sales of ready-made PCs sold by companies like Dell or Alienware are decreasing, but the number of components is actually increasing. This means that more and more users choose to build their own PCs and to upgrade the one that they already have.
It's difficult to comprehend the number of players on Steam, especially since it's such a large number. For example, Electronic Arts reported that over nine million people tried out their Star Wars Battlefront Beta, but that happened over the course of a few weeks. Steam just got 11.6 million people playing in one day.
The most played games on Steam are Dota 2, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, Team Fortress 2, Grand Theft Auto V, ARK: Survival Evolved, PAYDAY 2, Football Manager 2015, Sid Meier's Civilization V, Warframe, and Garry's Mod. There are over 6500 games on Steam, not counting the applications.
