[PC Gamer} Steam defies RAM-ageddon and the AI-pocalypse to smash through a new concurrent user record, and I'll see you

[NewsBOT]

SteamDB). Not a bad way to kick off the year, if you're a titanic videogame storefront.Which, yes, on the one hand, is hardly a surprise. Steam's growth has been relentless and undaunted for ages. It hit 41 million in October, 40 million in March, and 39 million in December 2024. I suspect I will see you back here in a few months when it hits 43 million. On and on it goes.But! Credit where it's due: these are fairly bleak times for this whole PC gaming thing. Also, the entire rest of society, but let's stay focused. As you're no doubt excruciatingly aware, building a PC in 2026, well, sucks.RAM is absurdly expensive because a cabal of billionaires has bought up, like, all of it to plug into the data centres powering their brain-melting lie engines. SSDs are more expensive too, as NAND production for AI server drives subtracts from production of NAND production for mere mortals like you and me. Oh, and GPUs are ridiculously pricey when their makers deign to remember videogames exist at all. Because of, yeah, AI.Artist's impression of current events. (Image credit: Jon Bolding)So it's perhaps some small encouragement that, for all that it truly blows to try to assemble a gaming PC in the year 2026, the dominant PC game storefront continues to hoover up users like some kind of, ah, hoover. You hear that, Altman? Buy up all the memory you want*, we'll just keep playing on our 6-year-old CPUs and 16GB of RAM and keep on trucking.*Please stop doing this, actually, if you happen to be reading.2026 games: All the upcoming games
Best PC games: Our all-time favorites
Free PC games: Freebie fest
Best FPS games: Finest gunplay
Best RPGs: Grand adventures
Best co-op games: Better together

Source: https://www.pcgamer.com/software/platfo ... -it-again/