Counter-Strike 2 finally beats CS:GO record no one thought it could top

CS:GO’s peak player count was monolithic, with the game gaining nearly unmatched levels of hype in May 2023 to hit a player peak of 1.81 million players. Now, despite CS2 having slightly lower player counts for a while after release, it has finally toppled its predecessor.

A number of factors from frustration with Counter-Strike 2’s changes to the formula to its increased minimum requirements making it harder to run, it had a few factors working against it.

While Valve’s flagship tactical shooter was still immensely successful, it long lived in the shadow CS:GO cast on it and never managed to reach the peaks that game achieved despite completely overwriting its existence.

That is, until now.

Counter-Strike 2 sets new Steam record

With a player count peaking at 1,824,989 players, Counter-Strike 2 has officially eclipsed CS:GO’s previous player count record of 1,818,773. Even Valve acknowledged it.

This comes after Steam broke its all time player count record of 40 million concurrent users at once, as well as CS2’s skin market hitting a record market value of $4.28 billion dollars.

Considering it’s one of the biggest esports in the world and has completely taken over Steam as of late, there are no signs of slowing down for Counter-Strike.

However, this record doesn’t make it the most played Steam game of all time, not by a longshot.

PUBG, Black Myth: Wukong, and Palworld now have it handily beat according to Steamdb’s info. CS:GO is now technically the 5th most played game even if it doesn’t show up on the list, followed by Monster Hunter Wilds in 6th place.

In the last 24 hours at the time of writing, however, PUBG is the next closest at 877k. It has more than double the player count of any other game on the platform currently, making it far and away the most popular game on Steam right now.