Counter-Strike 2 has already breached the million player mark with ease within 24 hours of release.

Counter-Strike 2 launched to much fanfare in September 2023. The brand new FPS title replaces Global Offensive in the Steam Library which means a big portion of the CS:GO community transitioned to CS2. Here’s how many players play CS2 on Steam

How many people play CS2?

CS2 replaced CS:GO on Steam, which means that everyone who started their Steam client, they can only see CS2. Global Offensive is the only title in the Counter-Strike franchise that is no longer playable. 

Screengrab via Stemacharts.
Screengrab via Stemacharts.

As expected most of CS:GO’s active player count quickly transitioned to CS2. Just hours after its launch, CS2 reached the million player count club and inched even higher.

Data from Steam charts shows CS2 had nearly 1.36 million concurrent players. This is not the highest peak for CS2 player count, however. 

But this is not the peak

Earlier this year when Valve first announced CS2, there was reinvigorated interest in Global Offensive. Players who had not touched the game for a few months came back to play CS:GO before CS2’s release.  Late last year, CS:GO saw a renewed interest with more than 1.5 million players shooting heads.

But CS:GO’s highest moment was in May this year when it reached its all-time high numbers of 1,802,853 players. This number coincided with the final CS:GO Major - the BLAST.tv Paris Major. Team Vitality won the Major with a dominating performance in the Grand Finals. They cemented their names in the CS:GO history as the last team ever to win a Major.

What’s next for CS2 Player Count?

Counter-Strike 2 has launched without many features and maps. And we can expect Valve to add new features, game modes and maps to the game as time progresses. Each new update, each new addition is bound to bring more and more people back into the game. There is a good chance for CS2 player count to surpass the previous all-time highs set by the previous title. 

Stay tuned to esports.gg for the latest CS2 news and updates.