Valve’s ever-popular competitive shooter has achieved yet another feat of greatness. Smashing records and taking names, Counter Strike: Global Offensive garnered a staggering 1.4 million concurrent players on Steam last Saturday, March 11.
The new milestone comes merely a month after setting an all-time peak of 1.32 million concurrent players. The game’s official Twitter account posted a thank you to all the players who contributed to the momentous occasion, while simultaneously highlighting that the previous record was broken. A humble boast, indeed.
According to SteamDB, a total of 1,420,183 players contributed to the record on Saturday, whilst the game barely dropped below half a million simultaneous users all week. What’s more, CS:GO even dwarfed popular titles Dota 2 and Apex Legends, which occupied the number two and three spots on the chart, standing at a total of 582,750 and 197,562 concurrent players, respectively.
What’s behind the recent boom? No one knows for certain, though one could point toward a recent Nvidia Leak suggesting a sequel of sorts, or at the very least a move to the Source 2 engine, has spurred CS:GO fans into action this past weekend.
Also, like Valve’s other multiplayer hits (Team Fortress 2 and Left 4 Dead 2, springs to mind) the game can run on pretty much any hardware you can throw at it, and with the almighty GTX 1060 still reigning supreme on Steam, coupled with the game being free-to-play, makes it an easily accessible title to a vast amount of players worldwide.
The competitive nature of CS: GO has made it one of the most successful (and lucrative) esports titles to date with large tournaments still being held regularly. A good example is the ESL Pro League that is currently hosting a 44-team bonanza in Malta, with an eye-watering cash prize of $850,000.
As for the rumours, Valve and its developers have neither confirmed nor denied whether the Source 2 leak is indeed real, though if it is, we could see a beta launch within the month. Here’s hoping, and you can believe that we’ll keep our eyes peeled until then.
