Popular multiplayer tactical first-person shooter Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (CS:GO) has broken its all-time concurrent user record yet again, cementing itself as one of Steam’s biggest-ever games. The game continues to receive frequent updates from Valve, including smaller balancing patches and larger content additions.
CS:GO Breaks Its Own Record
Over the weekend, the game topped 1.8 million concurrent users, with 1,818,773 players online at once yesterday. The only game with a higher concurrent count is PUBG: Battlegrounds.
CS:GO has been around for over 20 years, and the seminal shooter only recently surpassed its own concurrent record. It hit an all-time peak of 1.32 million players in February, breached 1.4 million in March, and reached 1.5 million concurrents at the end of that same month.
Before February’s then-new record, CS:GO’s concurrent user record reportedly stood at 1,308,963 players, which was set three years ago. With the unexpected events of the past year keeping people indoors, these latest record-breaking user numbers are even more impressive.
In recent years, the eSports industry has experienced exponential growth, and Counter-Strike has played a significant role in this development. The 2021 Stockholm Major final between Navi and G2 peaked at over 2.7 million viewers, a vast difference from the first major, Dreamhack Winter 2013, which had only around 145,000 viewers at its peak. CS:GO has now become one of the largest eSports games available, with the scene having come a long way since its early days of informal LANs and small crowds in 2012.
Counter-Strike 2 Announced
Despite rumours of Counter-Strike 2 circulating for some time, including a leak earlier this year and a trademark filing, Counter-Strike 2 was officially announced to launch in summer 2023. It will be a free upgrade to CS:GO, starting a new era of the game on Valve’s Source 2 engine.
The company promises that it will mark the
“largest technical leap forward in Counter-Strike’s history”.
You can play Counter-Strike: Global Offensive on a variety of platforms, including PC, MAC, and legacy platforms.