The hype for Counter-Strike 2 could only be defined as real but despite this anticipation from players, numbers seem to indicate the new game wasn’t quite enough to break any records for the franchise.
That’s right, the 1.8 million player milestone that CS:GO lodged back in May during its final Major is still holding strong as the franchise’s concurrent player record. Throughout its debut weekend, CS2 only managed to peak at 1.4 million.
In fact, this 1,471,730 player peak lodged by SteamDB was reached on the very first day, Sept. 28. Since then, CS2 has failed to reach these heights but has held strong at similar numbers that were recorded in the days leading up to its release.
We’d be lying if we said we weren’t a little surprised CS2 didn’t draw in more players upon its launch, but there are multiple factors to consider as to why no records were broken here. The biggest of these is that many fans believe CS2 was rushed and isn’t in a great state right now.
A lot of the Counter-Strike community also already had access to CS2 and, without any new modes or additions made for its full launch, there’s no real reason to rush back if you were already part of the beta test.
Finally, many believe CS:GO’s botting problem was the cause of its previous record-breaking peaks, and should this be the case then the numbers from the CS2 launch would fall in line with what you’d expect.
Like most recent games, CS2 is suffering from growing pains, but we’d expect that once more content is added and many of the issues plaguing the game are fixed, we could see the integrity of its current concurrent player record tested. For now, if you haven’t tried CS2, it is available for everyone via Steam.
