Counter-Strike 2 has reached a new milestone today, setting a new standard for total players while still chasing the the all-time record for the series. The latest iteration of the Counter-Strike franchise reached its highest player peak ever.
Is CS2 perfect? No, but it couldn’t be further from “dead.”
CS2 Strengthens Its Hold As The Most Popular Game on Steam
On February 16, 2025, Counter-Strike 2 reached a concurrent player peak of 1,744,015 players, according to the trusted SteamDB database. This occurred around 13:50 UTC: mid-to-late afternoon in Europe, night-time around Asia, and morning for the Americas. This number represents the most amount of players playing CS2 at once since just a couple months ago in December 2024.
Since December, CS2 has averaged over 900,000 players, according to SteamDB. As impressive as the peaks and averages have been recently, they’re still just a bit short of the all-time records set by CS:GO. May 2023 saw the highest player peak ever in Counter-Strike history at 1,818,773 players, as well as the highest average ever at over 1.11 million players. Those historic numbers can be attributed to the announcement of the CS2 limited test and the start of the final CS:GO Major, BLAST Paris.
The slight dip in CS2 player peaks and averages in January 2025 could be attributed to the break in the professional circuit following the Perfect World Shanghai Major. As the schedule has resumes with events like BLAST and IEM Katowice at the start of February, the player count swells once again. CS2 effectively owns the top spot on Steam’s player charts, as it has only been surpassed in active players in exceptionally rare circumstances.
While the game’s popularity and player base show zero signs of trailing off, there are still concerns that players want addressed. These range from the still-rampant cheating issue to problems with FPS performance to a lack of content such as operations or new modes. Still, outside of maybe League of Legends, it remains the most popular PC game in the world.
Will CS2 eventually beat the CS:GO player peak? Let us know down below, and join the discussion in the official Insider Gaming forums.
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