Halo Infinite multiplayer obliterated the Steam record for Microsoft

Even though it was heavily rumoured beforehand, it was still major news that the multiplayer component from Halo Infinite was surprise launched during the Xbox 20th anniversary celebration event yesterday. And it seems like this was something the fans had been looking forward too, both for PC and Xbox.

Thanks to SteamDB, we can now get rock solid numbers that reveals exactly how popular Halo Infinite was on Steam, which is just one of two PC platforms the game was released on (the other being Microsoft Store). The previous Steam record from Xbox Game Studios was Halo: The Master Chief Collection with 161,024 concurrent players, followed by Forza Horizon 5 at 81,096 concurrent players.

But guess what, Halo Infinite has already beaten those records, or maybe annihilated is a more appropriate word to use here. At the time of writing (the record has been growing continuously during the last few hours), it has peaked at 272,000 concurrent Steam players. To make things even better, Halo Infinite is also topping the Global Top Sellers list at Steam, beating a competitor like Battlefield 2042 - despite the fact that it isn't launched until December 8 while the multiplayer is free and thus not needed to be purchased at all.

Basically, it seems like the multiplayer portion of Master Chief's brand new adventure is off to a really good start. Did you expect it to perform this well?