▷ How many people play CS:GO? (Counterstrike Player Count)

In this article you can find the “player count” of the Steam game Counterstrike Global Offensive and how it is evolving.

How many Players
does CS:GO has?

The CS:GO user count has an average monthly size of 750.000 players in 2020. After the release of Counterstrike Global Offensive in 2012 the first peak was in 2016 with up to 850.000 active players, but in 2020 CS:GO was able to beat the record and reached maximum peak of 1.300.000 active players.

CS:GO continues to be one of the most popular and most played games in the world, especially in the shooter scene. It’s quite and old game, but CS:GO is the number one game on Steam when talking about the player activity.

How did the CS:GO Player Count Developed over the Years?

The CS:GO player count developed well in the past 8 years. The game was at first continiously growing and reached the first maximum player count in 2016, but was able to hold it over the years most likely. In 2020 it had another great peak. In the table you can find the average monthly CS:GO player count:

Year:	Average Monthly Player Count:
2020	750.000
2019	620.000
2018	615.000
2017	660.000
2016	690.000
2015	480.000
2014	140.000
2013	35.000

Steam Chart Player Count of CS:GO:

On the Steam chart website you can get the player data from CS:GO. On the image you can see the difference between October 2019 with about 400.000 active players and April 2020 with about 860.000 active players, the numbers even doubled in such a short amount of time! This is a huge boost for CS:GO and the scene.

You can find the Steamchart website here.

Google Trend Interest on CS:GO:

Google Trends is determining the overall interest in brands and products and gives us feedback to check the interest over time. As we can see here, Google Trends describes the overall interest for CS:GO in 2016 much bigger compared to 2020. For me that means, there are not more people googling it, but many players came back, who already owned the game, mixed with those who are new.

Statista Data Trend of the CS:GO Player Count:

The data website Statista is showing the opposite, but they are just displaying peaks of current players. The CS:GO current player peak was much higher in 2020.

Was there a CS:GO Growth
during the Covid-19 Pandemic?

Yes, CS:GO was tremendously growing due to the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020. When Corona and COVID-19 kept all the people in the world at home, the player count of CS:GO dramatically increased and reached it’s absolute climax.

While it was bad for people and a bad thing at all, it was good for the gaming industry, entertainment industry, and tech companies. It’s obvious that people invest more time playing computer games if they are arrested at home. CS:GO reached the all-time peak in the Corona timeframe of March, April, and May 2020.

How did the CS:GO Pro &
Streaming Scene developed?

As you can see on the Twitch Data image, the graph is also growing in 2020 in Q1 and Q2. Not only are more CS:GO players online, also more stream viewers come to Twitch and other streaming platforms to watch CS:GO. As more players are at home, pro tournaments are limited, but online tournaments increased.

Is CS:GO Dying or Growing?

After the release, CS:GO was growing until 2016. After 2016 CS:GO was dropping, but Valve was smart enough to make the right decisions: Counterstrike Global Offensive is still a top e-sport game on the market even after over 8 years.

Valve saw that CS:GO had a hard time when Fortnite, Apex Legends, and PUBG were growing, but at that time, they decided to make CS:GO free to play in the Steam library. Before that, the price was about 15$, which made it much harder to play for a lot of people.

Making CS:GO free-to-play like Fortnite, created an uptrend which ultimately reached its climax in the COVID-19 pandemic, double down maxing the 2016 records.

Is CS:GO dying? No it’s now, not even close, the queue times are excellent, the community activity and the streaming diversity is excellent as well.

You may ask, how that is possible for such an old game? CS:GO always remained loyal to its basic concept. While other shooters added more depth trough spells, items, and features like building (in Fortnite), CS:GO never added such features. Yes, they added a battle royale mode called Danger Zone, but percentage-wise it’s not played much compared to the normal game.

CS:GO players love the plain focus on aiming skills.
That’s it! The game will only drop if another game title will come, who makes that better. In the meantime Valve will update CS:GO as good as they can, like they did with the Panorama UI menu and by making it free-to-play.

Which Countries play CS:GO the Most?

Country:	Percentage of CS:GO Players:
United States	About 14%
Russia	About 11%
China	About 9%
Germany	About 6%
Brazil	About 6%
Poland	About 4%
Turkey	About 4%
United Kingdom	About 4%
France	About 3%
Canada	About 3%
Sweden	About 2%
Australia	About 2%
Spain	About 1%
Ukraine	About 1%
Denmark	About 1%
Japan	About 1%
Portugal	About 1%
Romania	About 1%
Norway	About 1%
Thailand	About 1%
Rest of the world	About 20%

Are there still people playing CS:Souce and CS 1.6?

Yes CS:Source and CS 1.6 are still getting played even nowadays. The active player numbers of CS:Source and 1.6 are quite low. If you are an old school gamer you will know the game titles, which were the previous Counterstrike versions of CS:GO. CS 1.6 gets played much more often than CS:Source.