About the data

How are player counts measured?

Every hour, steamdata.dev asks the Steam Web API how many people are playing each tracked game at that moment. That's Steam's concurrent player count: people in the game on Steam right then, not owners, sales or wishlists, and not players on consoles or other launchers. The rankings, and the figures listed beside each game, are updated after each hour is complete, so they can trail a game's chart by an hour or two.

Which games are tracked?

Most games come from SteamCharts' top 500 as it stood in September 2026. Since then, any game that appears in Steam's own top 100 by players is added within the hour, so new hits are picked up as they launch. Demos, dedicated servers and software are left out. Once a game is tracked it stays tracked, so its history doesn't have gaps.

What does the 24h change mean?

It compares the latest count with the one recorded about a day before it, so the daily swing between evening peaks and overnight lows doesn't show up as growth or decline. Games tracked for less than a day, or missing that earlier reading, show no change.

What are the movers?

The Movers on the home page, and their pages under Tags, are retagged every hour, each with the 25 games showing it most. Top risers and fallers have the biggest 24h change either way, as a percentage, among games that had at least 1,000 players a day earlier, so a small game gaining a few dozen players doesn't top the list. Top climbers and biggest drops moved the most places in the ranking in 24 hours.

Near their peak are at 90% of their all-time peak or more; far below their peak, the furthest under it, among peaks of at least 1,000 players. Both count only games tracked for at least 30 days, so a new game isn't trivially at its peak. A game on one of these lists wears its badge on its page and in list rows.

What are update bumps and new releases?

Once a day, the 25 games whose players rose most after a major or regular update posted in the last 14 days are tagged as bumped by it: each up 10% or more, measured as below, from at least 1,000 players the week before.

New releases are the 25 most played games released in the last 30 days, by the release date on their Steam store page. A game that left early access dates from its full release.

Is the peak a game's all-time record?

It's the highest hourly count recorded here since tracking began, and each game's page shows the date it was set and when tracking started. A game that peaked before then, or between two hourly readings, may have gone higher than shown.

What do the charts show?

Ranges up to 30 days plot every hourly reading. The 90-day and 1-year ranges plot each UTC day's average, with a band from that day's lowest to highest reading; the current day is left off until it's complete. The all-time range does the same by week, starting each Monday. Hours, days or weeks with no reading show as breaks in the line.

What are the updates, and their change in players?

Updates the developer announced on Steam, marked on the chart when they were posted and labelled the way the developer labelled them: major, regular or small. Hover a marker to see its title, or click it to open the post on Steam.

Each game's recent updates are also listed with the change in average players in the week after the update, compared with the week before it. The day it was posted counts toward neither. Until the week is over, the days so far are compared with the same days of the week before. Anything else that moved players in those weeks, like another update, a sale or a tournament, is mixed in.

What do the evening tags mean?

Once a week, each game's hourly counts from the last four weeks are averaged by hour of the day. If its busiest hours fall in the evening in the Americas, Europe or East Asia, it's tagged with that evening, or two of them when they're close; if even its quietest hour keeps most of its players, it's "around the clock". It's under Insights on each game's page: click it to shade those evenings on that game's chart, and again to clear them, or turn them on one at a time under the chart to keep them on for every game.

It shows when people play, not where they live: China, Korea and Japan share an evening, and a game played around the clock may be left running as much as played worldwide.

What are the studio pages?

Each game's page links to its developer's and publisher's pages, from the names on its Steam store page. Each lists that studio's tracked games, most played first, with how many people are playing them at the latest count; one that both develops and publishes has a tab for each.

Can I get the raw data?

Yes, as JSON from api.steamdata.dev, with no key needed: /api/apps for the ranked list, /api/apps/<Steam app id> for one game, /api/apps/<id>/history?range=7d for its counts over time, and /api/search?q=<name> to find a game's app id. Each game's page is at steamdata.dev/apps/<app id>, the id in its Steam store URL. llms.txt lists every endpoint and what its figures mean.