Over the past three months, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (CS:GO) has been consistently breaking its own concurrent player records. In February, the classic shooter topped 1.32+ million as it eclipsed the peak seen shortly COVID pandemic began. In March, it eclipsed 1.4 million. By late March, it was past 1.5 million players as growth accelerated and hype grew for this summer’s release of Counter-Strike 2. Now, its newest peak player count sits at over 1.8 million.
Rumors had been persisting of a sequel to the beloved shooter for a while, but it was finally announced in late March alongside a handful of short trailers showing some of the changes coming to the sequel.
Here’s one of the trailers in case you missed it.
CS:GO’s competitive scene continues to be one of the biggest. The Blast.tv Paris Major kicks off today and will last through May 21. Today’s tournament start also marks the last for CS:GO.
The Paris Major will be the final CS:GO Major.
The following Major will be in March 2024 and the first in Counter-Strike 2.
Despite the recent surge in growth, CS:GO’s concurrent record is still way behind the top spot. That belongs to PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds (PUBG), which hit an all-time peak of 3.2+ million in January 2018.
Still, it’s impressive growth for a game that first released in 2012. It won’t be CS:GO that’ll top PUBG, but watching how high Counter-Strike 2 can go when it officially releases this summer will be fun.
