Review
Arc Raiders: an extraction shooter for the masses
by Philipp Rüegg
December and January: Steam breaks several records thanks to "Arc Raiders"
20.1.2026
Translation: machine translated
One record follows the next: after a historically strong December, the launcher has now eclipsed the previous records for concurrent user numbers in January.
The gaming platform Steam has nothing to complain about at the moment. It had by far the most successful December in terms of sales figures. And things are set to continue in January: Steam is also setting new records for the number of active users - and breaking them again.
December: record-breaking sales
December is traditionally a good month for Steam: over the holidays, the Winter Sale attracts many people to their computers and the days off ensure that they also have time to game.
According to market analysis company Alinea Analytics, which specialises in gaming, 100 million users generated a record turnover of 1.6 billion US dollars. However, the Alinea report does not clearly state whether December 2025 was Steam's strongest month ever in terms of revenue; it only compares the previous Decembers.
In 2024, sales were 22.7 per cent lower. The last month of 2025 also eclipsed the previous record December 2020 with its turnover of USD 1.4 billion. In 2020, the restrictions imposed due to the coronavirus pandemic gave Steam a huge boost.
As in November, the biggest driver of sales figures was the extraction shooter «Arc Raiders». The game, which was released on 30 October 2025, became an overnight hit and, according to SteamDB, looks set to be one of the most popular games on Steam in the long term.
In the holiday period between 21 December and 4 January alone, 1.2 million gamers bought the title on Steam. In total, Arc Raiders has sold more than 12 million copies across all platforms - Steam, Xbox and Playstation. After «Arc Raiders» comes a surprise in terms of the number of keys sold: The story game «Detroit: Become Human», which was released in 2018 - on Steam in 2020 - took second place in the December rankings with almost one million sales thanks to a large discount. It was followed by the co-op climbing game «Peak» with around 270,000 copies.
January: new user records
In January, Steam employees can put on their party hats once again. In the first week of the year, more than 41 million users were online at the same time for the first time. The next milestone of 42 million simultaneous users followed on 11 January according to SteamDB.
Although these are nice figures, they do not represent how many users are actually active in a game. These are significantly fewer, but Steam has also reached new record figures here in recent weeks. On 4 January, Steam just missed the 13.4 million mark with its highest ever number of active users of 13,399,959. Since then, slightly fewer users have been playing a game at the same time, but on 10 and 11 January there were also more than 13 million.
Steam was launched in 2003 and is by far the most popular platform for PC games. Other launchers such as those from Epic Games, EA and Ubisoft are far behind and have never been able to achieve such a reach. The new records are proof of the launcher's continued success. Behind it is the non-listed company Valve and its founder and majority owner Gabe Newell, whose fortune thanks to Steam is estimated at eleven billion US dollars.
Header image: Shutterstock/Casimiro PT
Feels just as comfortable in front of a gaming PC as she does in a hammock in the garden. Likes the Roman Empire, container ships and science fiction books. Focuses mostly on unearthing news stories about IT and smart products.
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