Thirty days ago, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive broke the record for concurrent players like a boss (opens in new tab). This iteration of the game is 11 years old, while Counter-Strike itself has been around since 1999. Barely a month later, CS:GO has done it again: this weekend, CS:GO reached a peak of 1.4 million concurrent players. [The previous record was 1.32 million in February 2023; according to SteamDB (opens in new tab), the new record was set on Saturday, March 11 at 13:00 UTC, meaning 1,420,183 players played at once. Such sustained growth from the game's release to this point is remarkable, and many have theorized as to why, but any answer ultimately comes down to the bedrock-fundamentals of the game. when Valorant was released, the game that tempted me away from CS:GO I thought it might be the game to tempt me away from CS:GO. It did not last.

The CS:GO Twitter account has moved away from tormenting fans with memes and acknowledging new milestones with what could be called a humble gag.

Also worth noting is that this is not a random peak, but reflects a sustained high player count. In the last 24 hours, CS:GO has once again broken records, surpassing 1.41 million players.

CS: GO did not launch in the best of conditions, and its first few years were marked by significant changes; in addition to the core of what makes Counter-Strike so good, it is a fair argument that it was the $400 knife that really saved it (opens in new tab). But what started as a console port is now the best competitive FPS ever (opens in new tab) and the most popular game on Steam.

What is interesting about this background is that whether it is CS:GO ported to Valve's Source 2 engine or the actual Counter-Strike 2, the Counter-Strike community is currently in a frenzy about a possible new version of the game (opens in new tab) The thing is that there's a lot of excitement: Valve has remained silent, but thanks to some database leaks and claims from esports officials, fans are definitely huffing and puffing on the Kopium: and many of them seem to be distracted by playing CS:GO.