This can be seen from the statistics on the Steamdb.com website. According to this, almost 90,000 users were at the same time in Stardew Valley (buy now 15.72 €) at peak time on the day mentioned. Exactly there were 89,807 who cavorted in the Steam version of the farm simulation on December 27, 2020. This is not only a considerable number in itself, but also means a new record: Never before have so many players been online in the Stardew world at the same time. The old record was from 2016 and is therefore four years old. Back then - shortly after the launch - there were 64,427 users.
There are probably several reasons for the renewed rush. The responsible game designer Eric 'ConcernedApe' Barone recently released the extensive update 1.5 for Stardew Valley, which brought some new features and content with it. Among other things, a local split-screen mode is now available, which should have attracted many players. In addition, the farm simulation is currently greatly reduced in Steam's winter sale, so that there are certainly some newcomers who wanted to take a closer look at the game.
Source: Steamdb.com