Weekend Highlights (March 1-2)

The number of concurrent users on Steam has, for the first time, exceeded 40 million, Monster Hunter Wilds became the fifth largest game by peak concurrent players in Steam's history, and Pokémon TCG Pocket downloads have reached 100 million. Here’s a roundup of the main events in the gaming industry from the past weekend.

Steam broke its own concurrent user record. According to SteamDB, on Sunday, March 2nd, there were 40,270,997 people logged in at the same time. Out of these, 12.7 million were actively playing games. This new record might have been achieved thanks to the 'Steam Next Fest' demo festival and the release of the highly anticipated Monster Hunter Wilds.
Monster Hunter Wilds itself also set a new milestone on Steam. On March 1, the number of concurrent players in its Steam version reached 1,384,608. As a result, Monster Hunter Wilds grabbed the fifth spot in the top games with the highest concurrent players in the platform’s history, surpassing Lost Ark, which had a peak of 1,325,305 players. To move up to fourth place, Monster Hunter Wilds needs to attract over 434,000 additional concurrent players.
Jam City completed the sale of Ludia studio, best known for games like Jurassic World Alive and Jurassic World: The Game. The developers were acquired by a group of Canadian investors, including BDC Capital, Investissement Québec, Fonds de solidarité FTQ, and Export Development Canada. As reported by PocketGamer, Ludia's CEO Jimmy Gendron remains in charge of the studio. Most of Ludia's 130-person team has stayed intact—only a small portion moved to Jam City, while the rest continue with Ludia.
The creators of the mobile card game Pokémon TCG Pocket announced that their project has reached 100 million downloads worldwide. It took four months to achieve this milestone, as Pokémon TCG Pocket was released on October 30, 2024. Recently, DeNA boasted that, thanks to the game's success, its gaming division's profits soared by 8126.8% to 21 billion yen ($138.3 million) from April to December 2024. While the exact revenue from Pokémon TCG Pocket wasn't disclosed, the estimates from AppMagic indicate the game’s net IAP revenue stands at $451.6 million to date.