The 8-year old game still going strong!
Counter Strike: Global Offensive just saw the highest number of players playing the game since January 2017.
In December CS:GO’s player count grew exponentially over the course of the month, culminating with a peak of 767,060 players, which is the highest amount of concurrent players since January 2017, which hit a peak of 814,616 players.
This is quite an achievement for an 8-year old game competing in a very-competitive industry. So much so that some games don’t even last 1 year before fading. Just look at Apex Legends for a recent real life example.
Reason for the Insurgence
So far, there seems to be no clear reason for the sudden increase in player traffic. Counter Strike has not seen any recent updates or major events, with the last update, Shattered Web coming in early November.
The game peaked in popularity in 2017 due to the very popular ELEAGUE major in Atalanta from January 22 to January 27. It featured the first Danish team ever to win a major (Astralis).What made the feat even more impressive was the fact that the tournament featured titans like Virtus.Pro and SK gaming.
One of the reasons may be the fact that Valve made Counter Strike free to play last year. While this resulted in an increase in cheaters, it also resulted in an increase in popularity of the game. This, along with the fact that Valve constantly updates the game to keep up with the changing times, might be the reason due to which the game continues to thrive. Valve also introduced a battle-royale game mode to the game, adding unique twists to the battle royale formula.
Ultimately, this should be seen as yet another indication that Counter strike is not going anywhere anytime soon, and is here to stay.
