January Steam Demo Enters Top 100 Concurrent Players on Steam

A while back, Valve began a system to help developers share demos of their upcoming games on Steam. It's a great move for everyone involved, as it gives valuable pre-release information to developers while ensuring that customers can try out games and decide, without purchasing, whether they want them or not.

With the first Steam Next Fest of the year rapidly approaching, nearly one hundred demos are launching weekly, as developers prepare for the imminent arrival of one of the most-anticipated events on the platform. While it's hard to pin these down while we wait for the official launch of Steam Next Fest, sometimes, they tend to blow up before the arrival.

Such is the case for a January 2026 demo, which saw slow and steady growth throughout the month of February. Burglin' Gnomes is an entry into the friendslop genre that invites players to take control of garden gnomes, completing the demands of the High-Gnome, including thieving, breaking items, and more.

Friendslop has been a strong element on Steam, as it's been partially responsible for the recent all-time concurrent peaks that Valve has been breaking in 2026. With so many players eager to jump into the action and play more, it has become a respectable genre spearheaded by the likes of R.E.P.O., PEAK, and RV There Yet?.

What's fascinating about Burglin' Gnomes' rise to glory, however, is that its original the 30th of January launch was received with just over a thousand players, and over the weeks, it's been growing. On Sunday, the 15th of February, it saw an all-time concurrent peak player count of 26,645, the highest recorded at the time of writing.

The number of players is enough to break into the top 100 Steam games by current player count easily. Perhaps more impressively, it makes Burglin' Gnomes the top 652nd most-played game on Steam by concurrent peaks ever, which, though it sounds modest in numbers, is a substantial success.

To put it into perspective, hundreds of games launch on Steam every week (including demos, of course), and thousands over the course of a year. According to SteamDB's Steam Game Releases by Year, 2025 alone had 20,018 games released, with the total number (adding all of the years together) sitting at 120,654.

This puts Burglin' Gnomes among the top-half percent of all Steam games released, battling other titans in the industry, all before the game is even fully out. It sets a precedent that might see it become a memorable release, depending on how the industry shifts are working at the time.

If you'd like to try out Burglin' Gnomes, you can check out the demo on Steam right now! It's set to "Coming soon", with no confirmation on its actual release time at the time of writing.