Steam hit a major milestone already this year, setting a new record for concurrent users. According to SteamDB, the platform peaked at 41,816,052 users online at the same time actively playing games. Not only that, but a new record for actively gaming users was also set, with that figure reaching almost 13.4 million as compared to March's 13.2 million record.

The timing of the record is likely no coincidence. Steam's annual Winter Sale, which wraps up later today, offered steep discounts on a wide range of popular titles, along with more modest deals on newer releases. Sales events have long been a reliable driver of traffic on Steam, pulling in both longtime users and players returning to pick up games they missed throughout the year.

Steam's growth has been steady for well over a decade, but it has accelerated sharply in recent years. A notable spike occurred in early 2020, when COVID-19 lockdowns pushed concurrent users past 23 million, later climbing to 28 million just a couple of years later. The company even offered a bundle of games, which went to COVID relief at the time. Since then, the rise of live-service games and consistently strong seasonal sales have helped keep players logged in, especially during holidays. Games like Arc Riders continue to grow, hitting over 3 million concurrent players this week.

Following a hack that happened over the Christmas weekend, Rainbow Six Siege players are finding themselves in the ban house thanks to yet another hack that references the nonsensical and popular 6-7 meme.

According to The Gamer, Ubisoft's tactical shooter is being hacked by some unknown force that's handing out bans for 67 days. Players are reportedly posting on social media that their accounts have been flagged for an unexplained "harassment offence," leading to their accounts being suspended from matchmaking.

Content creator VarsityGaming, who's been memeing the hack since it happened on January 4, corroborated the 67-day ban on their social media, suggesting that Siege may be down for two more days.

The Last of Us Season 3 is on the way, but Neil Druckmann--who helped created the game's universe that the HBO show adapts--is not going to be part of it. He dropped out after Season 2, saying he wanted to focus on his work at Naughty Dog. Bella Ramsey, who plays Ellie on the show, has shared more insight into the series going ahead without one of its key creatives.

Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter, Ramsey said that while Druckmann has exited the hit HBO show, he's not really gone because his world will live on.

"I think he left us in such good stead. And he still will always be a part of the fabric of it--it's literally his creation; the whole world. He's still there, even though he is not. So I think it will be fine," Ramsey said.

Arc Raiders was a breakout hit in 2025, and it's still growing. New data from Alinea Analytics states that the game enjoyed its biggest day ever on Sunday, January 4, when it came to daily active users.

It was reported to have had 3.2 million daily active users on January 4 across platforms. Additionally, the research group said Arc Raiders passed 12 million copies sold over the weekend.

The number of Arc Raiders copies sold daily began to "stabilize" in early December, but the recent 20%- off sale--which brought the price down to $32--along with a boost related to people being off from school and work for the holidays, helped pump up daily sales figures, the report said.

Arc Raiders was one of the most successful games of 2025, but it was also criticized for its use of AI-based text-to-speech systems. Patrick Söderlund, the head of Arc Raiders studio Embark, has now shed more light on the situation, saying the studio's goal in implementing AI into its development processes is to make better games more efficiently.

He also pushed back against the idea that using AI systems in game development would lead to lower employment at Embark.

"We don't use AI to not have to hire people or replace people or job groups or voice actors," Söderlund told GamesBeat. "People have to take a step back and understand what it is and how it can be a big help to developers and be a tremendous benefit to players. I realize it is an intricate subject and discussion."

Sometimes you get so into a game that you scream uncontrollably. Whether that be a curse word or an SOS, if you yell loud enough, someone will come to your rescue. At least that's what happened to one Arc Raiders player, whose door was kicked in by a concerned neighbor after he heard the player yelling for help.

Redditor dreamthorp posted a 16-second clip of the incident on the Arc Raiders subreddit on January 3. They said they were playing a night raid on the Dam Battlegrounds, the game's very first map. While trying to extract from an elevator, a Leaper reportedly pounced on and downed them before the elevator doors shut. "I just wanted to get stabilized so I could leave," dreamthorp said in the comments of their Reddit post. It's at this point that they started screaming, "Somebody help me."

Well, somebody did come to help. As displayed on the door's Ring camera, a concerned neighbor walked over, knocked, and asked if they were "all good." Dreamthorp screamed for help again, at which point the concerned neighbor--a firefighter, according to dreamthorp--stepped back, assumed a stance, and kicked the door in, an action that allegedly corrupted the Ring camera's file.

Time is running out to play Anthem, BioWare's live-service game that originally launched in early 2019. In just one week, EA will take the online-multiplayer game offline, meaning it won't be playable starting January 12.

EA officially announced that Anthem would be shut down in July 2025. This gave players roughly half-a-year to return to the RPG and to spend any leftover currency they had for the title. Eurogamer is looking at whether any sort of in-game event is planned to make the occasion, but that seems very unlikely at this point.

After that announcement, former BioWare producer Mark Darrah discussed what went wrong with Anthem--at least from his point of view. For instance, Darrah noted that Mass Effect director Casey Hudson pitched Anthem to EA as a whole new direction for BioWare, but then Hudson left the studio and couldn't lead that proposed transformation. Hudson is now overseeing the team that's working on the recently revealed Star Wars: Fate of the Old Republic.