2020 was, yeah, you know. Different. Challenging. Insane. And with many working from home, in isolation or quarantine for extended periods, or simply unable to travel -- games became a go to way to escape and socialise. As part of a broad look at Steam in 2020 Valve has released a Year in review that highlights exactly that.

With PC platform recording over 50% more hours played by its users compared to 2019, 22.4% more game purchases, and record-shattering peak concurrent player count of 24.8 million.


"As many of you already know, this past year had more than its share of challenges, with everyone's lives upended by the global pandemic," Valve writes. "While Steam was already seeing significant growth in 2020 before COVID-19 lockdowns, video game playtime surged when people started staying home, dramatically increasing the number of customers buying and playing games, and hopefully bringing some joy to counter-balance some of the craziness that was 2020."

2020 was also a big year for SteamVR, which makes sense. VR immersion can feel like you're in a new and different place -- with the year recording over 70% more VR revenue in addition to 1.7 million new SteamVR users.

For the full report -- hear here.