CS:GO was the most-played game on Steam in October

CS:GO has broken another record this year. The game was the most-played title on Steam last month for the first time, according to statistics website Steam Charts.

In October, CS:GO was the most popular game on Steam. It had 747,937 players in total, followed by Dota 2 with 739,924 and PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds with 637,870.

This accomplishment comes after the franchise was more than 100,000 players behind PUBG in August. CS:GO also hit its highest average player count between September and October.

CS:GO’s numbers have been on the rise since August when the StarLadder Berlin Major was played. Majors are known to bring casual players back to the game since they’ll watch the best teams in the world and feel motivated to play some matches again. New players also can play the game for free since CS:GO became free-to-play in December 2018.

Another reason for CS:GO’s recent popularity is the return of one of the game’s most iconic maps, de_cache. The revamped version has been available in the game’s workshop since Oct. 10 and Valve added it to casual, deathmatch, and scrimmage servers on Oct. 18. Players can also play Cache in competitive matches on third-party matchmaking platforms, like FACEIT and ESEA.

Although CS:GO was the most-played Steam title in October and had its highest average player count recently, these numbers haven’t surpassed the game’s highest peak player count. In April 2016, a total of 850,485 people played the game after the MLG Columbus Major.