With 31.4 Million Unique Players, Can Counter-Strike 2 Surpass CS: GO?

Counter-Strike 2 has exploded onto the scene, but just how many people are actually playing it?

Last month, we saw the launch of Counter-Strike 2, ringing down the curtain on the CS: GO era. Let’s take a look together at the player count for CS2, and see if it has what it takes to surpass CS: GO.

Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, not only ranks as one of the most-loved first-person shooter games of all time, but it’s also one of Valve’s biggest cash cows.

Since it hit the market in 2012, it’s kept its popularity through the roof, even smashing its own player count records a decade later. But now that CS2 has taken over from CS: GO, could there be changes brewing in the player data?

Let’s check it out: In the month since CS2 was launched, a whopping 31.4 million unique players have already joined the game. We’re talking an average of around 800,000 to 900,000 people playing at any given moment.

Fast-forward to October 31, and in the last 30 days, CS: GO had an average of 791,479 players online at the same time. This has made it the most popular game on Steam so far, almost doubling the second most popular, Dota2.

However, this was a drop from the average count of 976,000 in the 30 days leading up to the launch of CS2 in September 2023.

The record for the highest number of players on CS: GO is over a huge 1.8 million. These figures were pulled right from Steam’s API, dead accurate. Overall, since November 2022, the number of active players on CS:GO has been on a steady climb.

Just to put into perspective, according to data from SteamCharts.com, on May 6, 2023, CS:GO smashed its own record with a concurrent player count of an astonishing 1,802,853. This was only a few months before the release of CS2.

Before that, this tactical shooter game had already broken its previous record on February 11, 2023, when it reeled in a player count of 1,320,219.

Up until now, the peak player count for CS2 has hit a high of 1,364,902.