With Counter-Strike 2 coming soon, it’s no wonder Valve’s 2012 game has boomed again…

We wrote more about Counter-Strike 2 when it was announced, but the events leading up to it made us think it was an update to Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (or CS:GO for short). Gabe Newell’s company confirmed this, but the announcement also sparked interest in CS:GO. However, it is doubtful that Valve expected more players to play CS:GO than ever!

But it did happen; whether you look at SteamDB or SteamCharts, you can see that Counter-Strike: Global Offensive was played by over one and a half million people (1519457!) at one time. In April 2020, CS:GO set the previous record, but the pandemic-fueled result was surpassed by 200,000 in Valve’s aging but still deservedly popular free-to-play game, where everything we earned can be moved to Counter-Strike 2, including skins for CS2 running on the Source 2 engine…

It’s not just the hype that has led to this record-breaking game, as many people may have been nostalgic (Counter-Strike: 1.6 is something that many people play, but Counter-Strike: Condition Zero is perhaps less so) or even just bought CS:GO in droves to make it harder for Counter-Strike 2 to beat the record. It will be a free-to-play game, but beating its predecessor won’t be easy.

CS:GO, even at its weakest, was able to attract more than 400,000 players a day, and the free-to-play version was released at the end of 2018, which has helped Valve’s shooter to remain at the million-player level almost uninterrupted. It proves that if a game is free, many people will play it… But even more people will download it if it’s something of outstanding quality. And Valve can be justly proud of that. Hopefully, Counter-Strike 2, coming this summer, will be able to continue that.

Source: PCGamer