April 17, 2020 Counter-Strike: Global Offensive now has Valve’s biggest player count record – and the second-biggest in Steam history.
Counter-Strike: Global Offensive has stormed to yet another eye watering new player count record, smashing its previous all-time high and even beating Valve’s own Dota 2. Following a sustained increase in the number of players heading into the shooter’s fray over the past few months, today CS:GO has surpassed 1.3 million concurrent players.
To be precise, 1,301,348 players were in CS:GO at once as of today, April 17 – via SteamDB. That tops Dota 2’s long-standing record of 1,295,114, which has stood since 2016. That makes CS:GO Valve’s biggest game ever by this particular metric, but only the second-biggest on Steam – PUBG’s player count peak of 3.2 million, set back in 2018, is unlikely to be topped any time soon.
CS:GO has been setting records all month. On Saturday, April 4, the game achieved a peak concurrent player count of 1,228,875 – its all-time highest figure since it launched in mid-2012. CS:GO’s average player count just continues to rise.
To put these numbers into context, the previous peak player record set before early 2020 was just over 850,000 back in April 2016, and since then it’s generally sat somewhere between the 500,000 and 750,000 marks each month. Since August last year, the concurrent peaks have continued to rise, hitting over 916,000 in February 2020 – but since then they’ve leapt up enormously, with a high of 1,145,972 in March and the staggering new figure posted this weekend.
While these giant new figures will be, at least in part, attributable to the increase in players having to stay at home due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic around the world, they’re still astonishing for the eight-year-old game. It seems plenty of players are picking Valve’s shooter as a way to spend some time while they’re based at home.
If you’re a fan of CS:GO and are interested in seeing what else is out there to try, take a look at our lists of the best PC games, multiplayer games, free PC games, and free Steam games – your next favourite title could be just around the corner.