New stats of social VR usage on Steam (via SteamDB): In the last few weeks, VRChat (by far the market leader) has seen a substantial growth spurt in peak concurrency rates. After a giant spike of usage during its Ugandan Knuckles-flavored viral video peak in December 2017/January 2018, peak concurrency rates fell to around 6000-8000 from June to October. Since then, however, VRChat has been steadily picking its usage rates, and last month, saw a substantial jump, peaking at just under 11,000 on New Year's Day. (Lots of virtual parties to celebrate the New Year, looks like.) It's pretty typical for gaming to peak during in the holidays, but VRChat has sustained that momentum into the rest of January, peaking over 10,000 in concurrency every week.

10,000 is quite a lot. As a point of contrast, last generation's virtual world leader, Second Life, still gets peek concurrencies between 41,000-53,000 (this month) from a monthly active user base of about 600,000. So it's likely that VRChat has monthly active users in the low six figures -- between 100,000-250,000 is a safe estimate, a thriving community. (As for why it is thriving, Kermit the Frog may have a clue.)

By contrast, the two official, VR-centric heirs to Second Life are not doing anywhere near as well on Steam: