delphi.question.published

{
  "slug": "will-steam-exceed-its-all-time-concurrent-user-record-of-42-042-778-before-2027",
  "title": "Will Steam exceed its all-time concurrent user record of 42,042,778 before 2027?",
  "origin": "EDITORIAL",
  "timebase": {
    "clock": "REAL_UTC"
  },
  "closes_at": "2026-09-15T22:00:00.000000Z",
  "opened_at": "2026-08-15T15:54:02.581352Z",
  "blind_mode": true,
  "provenance": "PUBLIC_RECORD",
  "description": "The record was set on 11 January 2026 and confirmed by Valve at GDC 2026. Concurrent records on Steam typically fall in the first days of January rather than in December, which is what puts the year-end deadline in play.",
  "question_id": "eb8beb52-14b3-4956-b29e-909a936abbc4",
  "resolution_criteria": "YES if a concurrent user peak strictly above 42,042,778 is recorded with a timestamp on or before 31 December 2026, according to Valve's own published statistics.",
  "expected_resolution_at": "2027-01-05T12:00:00.000000Z",
  "canonical_source_policy": "Valve's own Steam statistics at https://store.steampowered.com/stats/ or a Valve statement. Third-party trackers are not the source of record.",
  "resolution_rule_revision": 1
}

Shown indented so it can be read. The hash is taken over the canonical form of the same object — keys sorted by code point, no insignificant whitespace, UTF-8 rather than escaped ASCII, timestamps RFC 3339 in UTC to microseconds, decimals as their plain string form. The check below re-encodes the object canonically before hashing it, which is why an indented display cannot make it pass or fail.