It was a record-breaking holiday season for Steam, as Valve's digital PC storefront reached a new all-time record for most concurrent users. However, the actual number of people playing games as opposed to having the Steam client open, did not break a record.

　　According to Steam's own public stats, sometime around January 2, there were more than 25.4 million people logged into Steam at the same time. That's a new all-time high.

　　Now, this doesn't mean that more than 25 million people were playing games on Steam at the same time. The majority of accounts were idle on the day the record was broken, according to PCGamer. The site notes that 7.4 million people were playing games on Steam during the record-breaking day. This is not a record, as 8.1 million people were logged into Steam, and playing games, back in March 2020.

　　In terms of the games people are playing, Steam's public data shows that its own free-to-play juggernaut CS:GO remains the most popular game on the platform by far with more than 1 million concurrent players on January 4. Dota 2 and PUBG follow behind in the second and third positions, while CD Projekt Red's recently released Cyberpunk 2077 and the enduringly popular Grand Theft Auto V round out the top five, both tallying hundreds of thousands of players.

　　In other news about Steam, Rockstar's Red Dead Redemption 2 was named Steam's Game of the Year for 2020, with Valve's own Half-Life: Alyx picking up the VR Game of the Year award. Here at GameSpot we enjoyed Half-Life: Alyx quite a lot as well, awarding it our own Game of the Year.

　　And if you're looking for a deal, Steam's latest Winter Sale is now live and ending soon--and it's offering some fantastic offers on a wide range of games.