Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, a modern classic among tactical multiplayer shooters, continues to score with large player numbers. Currently, CS:GO is even close to breaking its all-time best of 850,000 concurrent players on Steam from April 2016.

Namely, in the last 30 days played at weddings 817,000 players simultaneously Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (via Steam Charts). The average number of players is higher than ever – just under 500,000. As of 5 p.m., more than 700,000 players are playing CS:GO simultaneously, making the tactical shooter the most played game on Steam at the moment.

These numbers, however, always indicate only the actual players active at the same time. How many individuals that can be, Valve reveals in the official blog: Accordingly, in the last month almost 20 million players played CS:GO at least once.

Why an 8-year-old game dominates the charts

Counter-Strike has always been popular, ever since the erstwhile Half-Life mod was passed around at LAN parties in 1999 like the holy grail among today’s veterans. The recent success, however, comes not necessarily surprising.

Counter-Strike: Global Offensive was able to build on the success of its predecessors CS 1.6 and CS: Source and create a passionate and loyal worldwide community build. As an e-sports title, too, Valve’s multiplayer shooter is one of the most successful games worldwide.

At the end of 2018, Valve put the formerly Buy2Play title on a Free2Play model and released the Battle Royale mode Danger Zone. With so many irritating words, a shitstorm in the community was not long in coming.

Player increase despite shitstorm

The player numbers of Counter-Strike: Global Offensive increased by leaps and bounds despite the loud community criticism of Free2Play and Battle Royale, and have continued to grow to this day. Although the numbers always fluctuate a bit, they have not fallen below 300,000 simultaneously active players on average since September 2018.

The steady growth is likely mainly due to the criticized Free2Play conversion as well as the paid Battle Pass, which gives players new tasks to complete on a weekly basis as a Carrot under the nose holds. Valve had launched the new Operation Tattered Web with a Battle Pass at the end of 2019 after a hiatus of several years.

And even the long-term fans enraged by the Free2Play changeover could be satisfied with a CS Prime membership for former buyers of the game to be largely compensated and the shitstorm thus kept in check. Prime members can play among themselves and thus avoid being mixed with Free2Play players.

In the linked article we show you how fantastic CS:GO looks in the Unreal Engine. If you want to see a curiosity from the CS universe, take a look at the video of the mod that makes CS 1.6 playable in CS:GO: