The launch of Counter-Strike 2 marked a new generation for Valve’s defining online shooter. From CS 1.6, through Counter-Strike Condition Zero, CS Source, and CSGO, the eternal bomb-based battle between terrorists and counter-terrorists has seen highs, lows, and middling in-betweens, but Counter-Strike 2 felt like an exciting new chapter. Two months later, as we near the end of 2023, the Counter-Strike player count is at its lowest for 2023. On average, fewer people are logging into CS than at any time this year.

Counter-Strike 2 will bounce back, I’m sure. And it’s not like it’s failing. As of this writing, on Friday November 24, in the past 24 hours Valve’s FPS game has pulled in more than a million players, affirming its constant place at the top of the Steam user base chart. Nevertheless, we might still be in the adjustment phase. Moving over to Source 2 and replacing CSGO with something new was bound to create some problems and, based on recent figures, it seems players might be stepping back to give CS2 some more time.



On SteamDB, the Counter-Strike average player count for the last 30 days is 722,397, the lowest it’s been since the beginning of 2023. January, when we were still playing CSGO, before the launch of Counter-Strike 2, was also a pretty lean period, drawing an average of 725,236 players. Nevertheless, that’s still a little more than we’ve seen in the past month.

The figures on Steam Charts tell a similar story. On average, 720,371 players have logged into Counter-Strike in the last 30 days, compared to 726,150 in January. Both sites confirm that May was the busiest month for Counter-Strike this year. Likewise, on both SteamDB and Steam Charts, Counter-Strike’s peak player count for the last 30 days is the lowest compared to any other month in 2023.

Also notable, compared to a similar period in 2022, the Counter-Strike player count has actually increased – the last 30 days have seen a higher average and a higher peak than during November of last year. It’s still early days for Counter-Strike 2. We’ll see what happens in 2024. In the meantime, Valve has updated CS 1.6, and in the process, accidentally released a prototype build of Left 4 Dead.

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Posted: Nov 28, 2023 11:41 am
Related Forum: PC Gaming Forum

Source: https://www.pcgamesn.com/counter-strike-2/steam-players