Steam Hits A New Milestone, Thanks To 1M Players Playing 'DOTA 2'

"The Alliance" (L) battles "Natus Vincere" (R) during "The International" Dota 2 video game competition in Seattle, Washington August 11, 2013. Sixteen teams from 12 countries battled for some $2.9 million in prize money, with Swedish team "The Alliance" claiming the top prize of $1.4 million after defeating Ukraine's "Natus Vincere" in a final watched by an audience of 1700 at Benaroya Hall and streamed live on the Internet. REUTERS

“Defense of the Ancients 2,” or "DOTA 2" hit a new milestone for Steam last weekend as it became the first ever Steam game to have 1 million concurrent users. That means that there were about 1 million people who were signed in and playing the game at the same time, which is a first for Steam.

Steam released the statistics – which can be viewed here – and to be exact, the game actually peaked at 1,075,464 concurrent users. A report from Gamespot theorises that the reason why there was such a huge surge of users was due to a game event called the “New Bloom Festival.”

Regardless of how and why, what really matters is the fact that so many players ended up playing the popular Multiplayer Online Battle Arena, or MOBA game at the same time. Steam’s second most popular game, “Counter Strike: Global Offensive,” previously peaked at 419,393 concurrent players.

The other games in Steam’s list can barely scratch the surface that “Dota 2” or “Counter Strike: Global Offensive” reached. Valve’s multiplayer shooter “Team Fortress 2” had about 80,000 concurrent players, and it was the third most popular Steam game this weekend. Even the critically acclaimed game “Skyrim” only had about 44,000 players, and it was the sixth most popular game in the rankings, according to Steam.

Back in January, Steam did have 8.5 million concurrent users, but that was across all the games they had. The record “Dota 2” set is just for one game by itself, which could be considered by many as impressive, though it pales in comparison to the numbers that “League of Legends” makes. As Polygon pointed out, from March 2013 to the January 2014, “League of Legends” increased the amount of concurrent gamers from 5 million users to 7.5 million users.

Nonetheless, having 1 million concurrent players is still definitely a milestone for Steam. The fact that “Dota 2” has twice as more players than “Counter Strike: Global Offensive” is an impressive feat for the sequel to the already popular “Defense of the Ancients” or "DOTA."