The 63-year-old game Spacewar has set a new record, but there could be players behind it who are pirating a Steam hit.
What kind of 63-year-old game is this? On Steam, the game Spacewar has just set a new record for concurrent active players. At its peak, the game recorded over 138,000 players.
The curious thing is: Spacewar is, alongside “Tennis for Two”, one of the first video games ever developed and was released back in 1962 – even 10 years before “Pong”, the first commercially successful video game.
Spacewar is actually a multiplayer game in which two players control two spaceships and orbit a star. This star has its own gravitational pull, and players must try to avoid colliding with the celestial body. Whoever crashes first loses.
Spacewar as a disguise for pirates
What does the new hype game have to do with it? Spacewar is used in the API (Application Programming Interface) of Steam as an example application, which is why a fully functional version of the game is available for free to every Steam user.
Since every Steam user can play Spacewar and it has access to all Steamworks features, it is a popular disguise among pirates to play online games while utilizing all of Steam’s online functions. The pirates pretend to Steam that their illegal copy of a game is actually Spacewar.
The recent surge in player numbers for Spacewar began around March 24, 2025. On the same day, the game “Schedule I” was released, which has since become a Steam hit. Therefore, it is likely that many Spacewar players are actually playing a pirated version of Schedule I.
You can trace the increase in player numbers for Spacewar here:
New hype game makes you a criminal
What kind of game is Schedule I? Schedule I is a new game that is currently trending on Steam and with viewers on Twitch. It was released on March 24 and has shown strong numbers since then:
- It peaked at 414,000 players on Steam (via SteamDB)
- 98% of the over 42,000 reviews on Steam are positive
- In the past 7 days, about 65,000 viewers were watching streams of Schedule on Twitch (via Sullygnome)
In the game, you take on the role of a small drug dealer who is starting their own business in a new city. You produce various goods and deliver them to your customers. Over time, you can acquire more properties and hire staff as well as street dealers to distribute your goods more effectively to the citizens: New game channels its inner Breaking Bad and is thus more successful on Steam than Ubisoft’s new AAA game
