The player base of CS2 is growing again

Counter-Strike 2 was released at the end of September last year and for several months, it lost an enormous number of players.

The Counter-Strike community went from having 1.12 million online players on average to having just 714.000. That’s a decrease of nearly 400.000 online players on average, which translates into a loss of more than five million players.

For other games, such as RPGs and AAA games that are exciting to play for several months and then everyone forgets about them (with the possible exception of Skyrim), this is perfectly normal consumer behavior.

But for an esport that’s supposed to offer infinite replayability and a competence ladder that you can climb and climb for years like in martial arts, this is not supposed to happen. Esports games build their player base slowly and then retain it. Because once you’ve gotten involved in a game and started to play it regularly with friends, it’s hard to give it up.

The socializing, the amount of fun you have in the process, and the fact that you become good at something are very addictive.

We fixed a gap in geometry on Vertigo with today’s update. Thank you for reading. https://t.co/A3nBarbwV8

— CS2 (@CounterStrike) January 19, 2024

CS2’s current player base

At the moment, CS2 has nearly 800.000 online players on average. Things are slowly improving and everyone hopes that Valve will fix the remaining bugs until the end of 2024.

When CS2 was first released, the game had numerous bugs and felt terrible to play. Compared to CS:GO, it was an absolute nightmare. On top of this problem, many game modes that were super fun to play in CS:GO disappeared entirely.

Valve promised that they will be added to the new game soon, but nobody knows when. It could take years for Counter-Strike to regain all of its former features. And its gameplay may never be the same, but we hope that it will become good enough to be enjoyable.

When you shoot an opponent in the most obvious way, your bullets are not supposed to disappear without doing any damage. Not to mention all the other bugs that Valve is currently working on.

One of the best players in the history of Counter-Strike, Aleksandr “s1mple” Kostyliev, decided to take a break from playing the game because he couldn’t stand it anymore. His decision might have precipitated CS2’s player decline over the past several months.

But now, the game is slowly getting better and its player base is growing again. The famous and ominous expression “dead game” is no longer spammed on forums.

Header: Valve