Multiplayer numbers?

I was referring to the steam charts, which shows offline players and online players. I was not suggesting steam can track your stats, when you run the program (Steam) in online mode. If 200 gamers are playing Medieval 2 Total War multiplayer, and 300 are playing (METW-2) standard campaign, steam would register 500 players…if the 500 are running steam in online mode.

You are both right; just using different terminology (though I think you meant to say "program (Steam) in offline mode.").

I don't know if this helps any but early on (at the point we went drm free) I was able to log in to my steam virtion of the game at the same time as using the uber launcher. In the steam vertion I was logged in under my steam username
whilst the uber launcher used my uber account name Maxcomander.

I only perchased the game through steam so I thaught that was pretty cool on uber's part.

When you first log in with steam, I believe it asks you to link your account with a PlayFab/Uber one. From that point on, I believe you don't even need to use steam any more if you wish. If you do log in with steam, it uses your linked PlayFab account behind-the-scenes (which is why it would still appear on PlayFab stats). I just don't know if it also does anything behind the scenes with the linked steam account when you don't use steam (though I would guess no).

Edit: Steam player count just peaked 2 players short of the all time high!

I can confirm you are correct. I can use either uber launcher or steam to log in and play online. I was online last night although I was playing ai skirmish.

Agreed but I hope Uber collect more information like retention, how many people play off-line, complete GW, DAU, new users, etc. Also a lot more metrics could be tracked and used in the decision-making process to have a of objectivity.