In the past 30 days, the average number of Counter-Strike: Global Offensive players reached 417,149 according to Steam Charts. This is the highest average number of players in the game CS: GO. In addition, lately, CS: GO is also quite often the game with the highest number of players on Steam. This is good news for fans and CS: GO professional players, given the number of other popular esports game players, such as Dota 2 and Player Unknown’s Battleground, it has actually declined.
CS: GO is not a new game. Valve released the First Person Shooter game in August 2012. Since its launch, slowly but surely, the number of CS: GO players has continued to increase until 2015. In 2016, the average number of CS: GO players has reached 379 thousand people, with a number of conccurent players ( most players who play at the same time) are 850 thousand players. Unfortunately, as stated by Win.gg, throughout 2017, the number of CS: GO players has continued to decline. In 2018, the number of CS: GO players has even dropped dramatically. The average number of players reached its lowest point in May 2018, with 262 thousand players. In June, the highest number of concurrent players reached only 420 thousand people. To overcome this problem, Valve made CS: GO a free game, which made the number of players skyrocket. Since then, the number of players has continued to increase. Meanwhile, Dot Esports reported, another factor that made more people interested in playing CS: GO was the esports match.
During 2019, the average number of CS: GO players does not usually reach 400 thousand people. However, in August, when the StarLadder Berlin Major was held, the average number of players had increased again. The existence of Major tournaments usually does make old players return to play because they are motivated to see the professional team play. In addition, this month, Valve also released a new version of the map de_cache, one of the most popular maps on CS: GO. The map has been available at the workshop since 10 October and can be played in Casual, Deathmatch and Scrimmage modes since 18 October. Players can even play these maps in competitive matches if they use third-party matchmaking platforms, such as ESEA and FACEIT.
Interestingly, the number of CS: GO players increased when the number of Dota 2 and PUBG players actually declined. In the past 30 days, the average number of Dota 2 players has only reached 398 thousand people, far lower than the average number of players. Meanwhile, the average number of PUBG players had indeed reached 1.6 million people amid its popularity. However, along with the increasing number of battle royale games, the popularity of PUBG began to decline. The existence of games like Fortnite and Apex Legends has made thousands of PUBG players move their hearts. PUBG Corp. also did not do many things to overcome the problem. PUBG is still sold without a discount and requires a high specification computer to play it. And despite PUBG Corp. trying to solve the problem now, it is unlikely that PUBG will be able to return to its golden era.
