Counter-Strike: Global Offensive has definitely overtaken Dota 2's peak and average player count, making the shooter more popular among Valve's big online games and the top game on Steam In December 2019, CS:GO had 767,. 000 peak users, while Dota 2 reached about 628, 000. Although CS:GO began to pull away from Dota 2 last year, CS:GO has now claimed the top spot for four consecutive months - this is not a coincidence but a trend, and the iconic crown can officially be passed on Dota 2's all-time player count peaked at 1.2 million in January 2015, and January 2016 returned to that number in January and February. Counter Strike Global Offensive's all-time peak player count was 850,000 in March 2016. Both are enduringly popular games that have experienced many famous moments in eSports. CS:GO in particular has produced many great plays over the past decade.

Dota 2's 2019 player count peaked at over 1 million in February, but has been on a general downward trend, falling in December after a major Outlanders update Outlanders thoroughly reworked many of Dota 2's game systems, so this not that surprising. According to Dot Esports, Dota 2's average player count is the lowest it has been since 2014, when the game was still relatively new and growing. Many in the Dota 2 community attribute the slow decline in player numbers to the game's notoriously poor new player experience.

Such an analysis would not be possible without the magic of the Steam charts. Of course, all of these numbers are tiny compared to the most popular PC game in the world: League of Legends has millions of players at its peak.