An hour ago, CSGO broke yet another record, beating its peak concurrent player count yet again and securing a figure totalling just north of 1.5 million concurrent users. This remarkable achievement comes mere days after Valve announced the existence of Counter-Strike 2 and the intention to ultimately sunset and replace CSGO with the all-new product later this year.
It’s an ongoing representation of just how valuable the Counter-Strike ecosystem truly is to gamers the world over. For a decade, CSGO has been at the forefront of PC gaming, and to this day, it’s one of the most popular games in the world.
Will CSGO secure an ever higher peak player count before it’s replaced with CS2 in a few months?
Pulling Power
CSGO continues to impress the gaming community at large as it absolutely refuses to stop being unbelievably popular. This powerhouse of a title has continuously broken its own peak concurrent player count record this year – on several occasions – and now that it has passed 1.5 million peak players (according to SteamDB), it shows no sign of slowing down.
Days ago, Valve announced CSGO’s successor of sorts, Counter-Strike 2, a fully upgraded and (in parts) redesigned version of the game running on Source 2, the firm’s most up-to-date gaming engine. There was an overwhelmingly positive reception to the news, and at the moment, the game sits in a limited access state, preparing to be released in full this summer.
It has meant that there will be a lengthy hiatus in the esports world of CSGO, but that’s just because a) CS2 needs to be polished, and b) professional players need a little more time to learn CS2’s nuances.
At the moment, CSGO is also one of the most popular games on Twitch, pulling in a 24-hour peak viewer count of just over 350,000. That’s not an anomaly – CSGO can usually be found sitting somewhere within the top five most popular games on the platform.
Let’s speculate – CSGO may have hit 1.5 million concurrent players on Steam today, but on the final day of the game being online – whenever that may be, could we see the peak count fly over 2 million?
For more Insider Gaming news, check out our coverage of Dark and Darker being removed from Steam following legal action.
