Simplified Chinese Players make up over 50% of Steam Users - February 2025

Chinese players accounted for 50% of Steam Users in February

Simplified Chinese’ Strongest February Ever

We all know that English and Simplified Chinese have been locked in a battle for Steam User supremacy for the last couple of years.

Each month we typically see one of these languages overtake the other, often to be overtaken again in the following month or two. This has been taking place regularly over the last few years, with English generally maintaining the highest percentage of users by a small margin over the course of a full year.

The fluctuations that we’ve seen typically change by 3 – 5%, with outliers showing swings of up to 10% between the two languages. Well, that’s not the case here…..

2025 has seen the largest February Steam User share swing ever, with Simplified Chinese increasing by 20.88%. This means that in February 2025, over 50% of Steam Users were using Simplified Chinese as their primary language, with English reduced to 23.79%.

To give this figure more context, we do see swings in favor of Simplified Chinese every February. This is attributed to public holidays for Chinese New Year, meaning Chinese players have lots of time to spend gaming over the two-week break. However, the swing has never been this pronounced. In February 2024 Simplified Chinese grew by 7.62% to cover 32.84% of Steam users, only just ahead of English at 32.12%. In February 2023 Simplified Chinese grew by only 2.47% to cover 26.28% of Steam Users, not even getting close to English at 35.27%. As you can see from these numbers, they’re not even close to what we’ve seen in February 2025.

While we’ve seen Simplified Chinese reach this level of popularity on extremely rare occasion, such as in March 2023, we’ve never seen a February with such notable fluctuation in user share. In the past Simplified Chinese’ steam popularity spikes have seemed like one-offs to some, but we’re now seeing this very regularly. At this point it’s undeniable that Simplified Chinese is a required language for any game’s release, and it’s likely we’ll see it truly overtake English consistently later in 2025. From where we currently stand, it’s just a matter of time.

If you want to be ahead of the curve, get in touch today to ask ECI Games about how we can help you make an impact on Chinese Players: info@ecigames.net