Upward trend in CS:GO: 1.2 million players in January

CS:GO is definitely one of the oldest esports titles that are still popular. It’s all the more impressive that so many people are still playing the shooter these days. Now, it seems that the game has reached a milestone, as it experienced a big spike with 1.2 million players in January!

Normally, these trends are present mostly when large tournaments are held. Sure, the  BLAST Premier Spring Groups matches were played this month, but they are a preliminary tournament to the BLAST Premier Spring Final and actually don’t have the same importance as the final.

So why are so many gamers playing CS:GO right now?

New uptrend hits 1.2 million player peak

According to SteamCharts, January 2023 was a very successful month for CS:GO. Valve’s title averaged 1 million gamers per day in January 2023, peaking at a record-breaking 1.2 million gamers. To be precise, that was 1,199,684 concurrent players within 24 hours.

Looking at SteamBD’s stats, these are the game’s best numbers excluding the timeframe of the COVID-19 pandemic. While that’s still around 100,000 fewer than the April 2020 record, it’s still an impressive feat.

The monthly increase in CS:GO players compared to December was +132.7K. Most of the average daily peaks also fell during the coronavirus era. In January, the number of CS:GO players increased by 14.5 percent on a daily average, which means an increase of around 91,000 players compared to the previous month.

What’s the reason for the CS:GO popularity?

There is no clear reason for this surge, but events like BLAST Premier Spring Groups have just come to an end and other big tournaments like IEM Katowice 2023 and EPL S17 are just around the corner. The start of the new esports season is most likely the main reason for this.

Normally there is an increment like this when a new Operation or other content is released, but that wasn’t the case in January. It could also be that it is a normal fluctuation that occurs every year at the turn of the year. A year ago there was a similar trend, with the average player base increasing by over 10 percent.

There were rumors about a new operation, but they turned out to be false. However, dataminer Gabe_Follower believes CS:GO will transition to Source 2 in Q1 2023.

The end of 2022 seemed to be one of the best periods, with one million concurrent players from August to now. Hopefully the FPS can continue like this for the rest of the 2023 CS:GO season. Then the record of 1,305,714 players in April 2020 will soon be broken!

Header: Valve