China «takes over» Steam: the number of users has grown to 40 million thanks to the eastern «invasion» (+20.88%)

The latest Steam survey Hardware Survey for February 2025 shows a huge increase in the number of Chinese-speaking users. Other global changes are related to this.

The abnormal growth of Chinese-speaking users has been observed before — due to the error of repeatedly interviewing the same respondents. But this time, it may be real (although the error cannot be ruled out 100%). The number of Chinese-speaking Steam users increased by 20.88%, with Simplified Chinese taking the first place and English — only the second, with a rate of 23.79%. This means that more than half (50.06%) of the respondents prefer Chinese. By the way, Ukrainian-speaking Steam users 100 times less, — 0.49%, and Russian speakers — 6.76% (third largest). According to the data SteamDBAs of March 2, the maximum number of Steam users reached a record 40.27 million.

China is one of the most densely populated countries in the world, so the advantage is clear. Steam has been available in China since 2021, but the jump has only just happened Games in China are regulated government; local users have a localized version of the platform — Steam China. Website Tom’s Hardware suggests that the latest survey combined international and domestic Chinese statistics. It should be noted that Taiwan and Hong Kong use traditional Chinese, which accounts for only 1.1% of Steam users.

It is likely that the sudden influx of Chinese users may be responsible for significant changes in hardware trends. First, the number of Windows 10 users grew by 10.47% (to 53.34%), making it the most popular again. The percentage of Windows 11 fell to 44.1% (-9.36%).

Despite a slight weakening of Intel’s position in the processor market, their share on Steam rose sharply to 68.89% (+5.14%). There was an important change among video cards as well: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060 became the leader with 8.57% (+3.97%). RTX 3060 is in second place with 6.87% (+1.67%). Another big change is a significant increase in the number of systems with 32 GB of RAM to 46.94% of users. Last month, 45.07% of respondents had only 16 GB.