The vastly popular first person shooter Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, also known as CS:GO has surpassed its previous all-time concurrent player peak record, over a decade after the game was initially launched on Steam.
CS:GO is one of the most popular shooter games on the planet, and there aren’t many who haven’t heard about it. The first game in the series, called Counter-Strike, came out in 2000. Since the initial game, it has gained a huge player and fan base worldwide, ultimately stirring up fans on obstawianie CS:GO. It is currently managed by Valve Corporation, which also owns and manages the Steam platform.
The current game in the series, CS:GO, was first launched in 2012. Even today, there is a huge eSports community around this game, with many tournaments held regularly that have a huge prize pool.
The game reached a new peak traffic record last weekend. The new record was set on Saturday, May 6, 2023, as the game hit a massive 1.8 million concurrent players (thanks, SteamDB). The previous record for this game was 1.5 million, which was set in April 2020 during the Covid-19 pandemic, in a timeframe when people were distancing socially and online multiplayer games were a decent means to connect with each other.
With this record, CS:GO sits in second place on the list of most concurrent players in any game on Steam. The top spot is held by the battle royale game PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds, also known as PUBG, which saw traffic as high as 3.25 million concurrent players in January 2018.
Why is there such a sudden rise in CS:GO concurrent players?
Looking at the Steam charts, the concurrent number of CS:GO players hovered around 900,000 for most of 2022. However, speculation of a new Counter-Strike game began to rise in late 2022. Valve then went on to announce the new title, called Counter-Strike 2, in March 2023.
The new game will be an overhaul of the current CS:GO, much like Blizzard did with Overwatch 2. It is set to launch in summer 2023, and individual players are already getting invites to test Counter-Strike 2. It appears that one’s chances of being accepted into the limited test are improved if their account shows evidence of regular CS:GO playtime.
This well explains the sudden rise of active players, as all CS:GO players will like to get early access to the upcoming game.
The new high-peak is an embodiment of CS:GO’s immense popularity across the globe, and considering its existence beside games like Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 and PUBG, it sure is an impressive feat.