CS:GO shatters records during final Major in game’s history

The CS:GO Major era ended in historic fashion at the BLAST Paris Major, with the prodigy born literally on the day of the original Counter-Strike‘s release lifting the trophy in front of a home crowd. The triumph of ZywOo and Vitality was the final highlight of what’s been a record-breaking run for the king of first-person shooters.

Just a couple days before the start of the Challengers Stage of the last CS:GO Major ever, the game hit a new all-time peak on Steam, with 1.818 million players on at once. But it didn’t stop there. Since the start of the BLAST Paris Major, CS:GO has retained an impressive number of players.

For almost every day of the BLAST Paris Major, CS:GO has reached a peak of over 1.7 million players, averaging over one million players every day along the way. To put that into context, the game had only reached this average on six individual days before, all in the past couple of months. Since May 5, just a few days before the start of the Major and one day before hitting that all-time peak, the average has remained over one million players every single day for almost three weeks now.

It’s not hard to see what’s causing these peaks and steady high averages. CS:GO started reaching occasional peaks of 1.5 million players and average player numbers of over one million right after Counter-Strike 2‘s announcement in March, which was fueled further by players thinking they could get CS2 beta access. The huge spikes just days before the start of the Major can be attributed to the release of the BLAST Paris Major viewer pass and the Pick ‘Em challenge.

Still, the game’s ability to sustain such impressive player numbers even during weekdays and those Major matches is satisfying to see for any fan of Counter-Strike. The CS:GO era may be coming to an end, but the future of the franchise looks as bright as it ever has.