Valve’s decision is paying off, as it can also satisfy players looking for the older, classic Counter-Strike experience.

Whenever we talk about the most popular game on Steam, there is always one evergreen, unspoken caveat: naturally, after Counter-Strike. Counter-Strike 2 is undoubtedly one of Steam’s biggest games, and SteamDB data shows that it easily exceeds one million concurrent players.

Its popularity shows no sign of slowing down, but we should not overlook the game it once absorbed and then displaced: its predecessor, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive.

According to SteamDB, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive reached its highest concurrent player count since returning as a standalone Steam release only three days ago. That amounted to just over 68,000 concurrent terrorists and counter-terrorists, 68,231 players to be exact.

That is naturally tiny compared with the original game’s historic peak or today’s Counter-Strike 2. Publicly visible SteamDB data also only goes back to earlier this year, when Global Offensive became separate from Counter-Strike 2 once again.

Still, it indicates a sudden upward trend, which is impressive for a game that cannot be easily found through a normal Steam search. It is reaching player numbers similar to Deadlock, another, much newer Valve game that is also not particularly easy to locate and download.

It currently sits as Steam’s 30th most popular game, outperforming Baldur’s Gate 3, Rainbow Six Siege, Battlefield 6, and many other major releases on the platform.

It is not Mecha Chameleon, of course, but for a fourteen-year-old game, this is still not bad at all. It is particularly interesting that the game’s popularity has already surpassed the initial excitement generated when the standalone version was first restored earlier this year.

This city is certainly big enough for two Counter-Strike games. In fact, it is big enough for much more: the original Counter-Strike and Counter-Strike: Source both maintain healthy player communities after all these years, not to mention similar games that are not even on Steam, such as Valorant.

The world of tactical first-person shooters is as diverse as we can remember. That remains true even when looking only at games with Counter-Strike in their titles.

Source: PC Gamer, SteamDB, SteamDB, SteamDB, SteamDB, SteamDB