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Published: October 2, 2023

Written by: Stefan Velikov

  • Counter-Strike 2 still isn’t as popular as CS:GO despite all the hype
  • The game has scored 1.5 million concurrent players, but that still hasn’t broken the record
  • Technical difficulties might be a huge reason for this being the case

Counter-Strike 2 has been up for several days, but the game still hasn’t broken the record of 1.8 million concurrent players set in May by CS:GO.

CS2 Is Still Catching Up

It’s safe to say that the hype for Counter-Strike 2 has only been growing since the new game was announced to be in development in the spring of his year. However, it seems like the game still has more time before it can beat the popularity of its predecessor, CS:GO, as the latter still holds the record for most concurrent players.

Back in May of this year, there were more than 1.8 million fans playing CS:GO at the same time. This large number could easily be explained by the fact that at that time, the game’s final Major was played. It was expected that when Counter-Strike 2 finally launched on September 27, this number would easily be dwarfed. However, the game recorded “just” 1.4 million players at its peak in the first 24 hours since launch.

That’s still a significant number of fans all wanting to play the title at the same time, but it needs hundreds of thousands more to break the previous record from May. That being said, we might see the record fall in the next few weeks, as according to Steam Charts, Counter-Strike 2 has seen over 1,556,000 concurrent players in the days after its release, signifying a growing player base.

It’s somewhat surprising that CS2 did not quickly shatter the previous record for the number of players, considering the game has been talked about for months and the hype surrounding it has only been growing. In fact, even the developers tuned into the hype, as Valve released a CS2 teaser just a week before the game’s official launch.

However, there might be a more technical explanation for the phenomenon. It seems that this exact hype is actually having the opposite effect and only exacerbating the problem. Considering so many players want to play the game right now, Valve’s servers simply could not handle the sheer number of fans.

This has resulted in many servers being overloaded and sometimes even crashing, which leads to players having to wait in queues for very long times. Some have reported having to wait up to 40 minutes for a game to be found. Valve acknowledged this problem and stated it is working to open more servers to accommodate the large numbers of players. However, at the time of writing this article, fans still report having issues finding matches.

Regardless of the exact reasons the previous CS:GO record has not fallen, chances are that when Valve fixes these initial issues, which have been worryingly become part of every major game launch, we will see the record broken.

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Stefan Velikov

Stefan is a well-versed gamer who loves every aspect of gaming - including its most competitive nature. He is bringing you the latest updates from the world of esports as he painstakingly tracks dozens of competitions. 

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1
Live odds: CS:GO

09:15 AM

Home

Away

Gui
Ano
1.47
2.47

00:00 AM

Home

Away

Wil
NRG
1.85
1.84

02:30 AM

Home

Away

M80
FLU
1.06
8.85

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