For the last six months, the entire Counter-Strike community was brimming with excitement, all because of the CS2 beta and the game’s highly-anticipated worldwide release. Now that the launch actually happened, though, the average CS2 player count has gone in the opposite direction of what Valve was hoping for.
The Counter-Strike 2 limited test was first introduced in March 2023 and marked the beginning of the most successful period in Counter-Strike history in terms of player base. During the beta’s first three months, the average player count went from 800,000 to over 1.1 million, far surpassing the previous record set during the pandemic. Valve must have hoped the full release of Counter-Strike 2 on Sept. 27 would lead to similar success, but the numbers tell a different story.
A quick peek at Steam Charts shows CS2 hasn’t been performing as one would expect since it officially hit the deck. Instead of adding to the already impressive numbers accumulated over the last six months, the first three weeks post-launch have seen a sizable decline in player base. Over 100,000 CS2 players have stepped away from the game following its official release, bringing the average number of concurrent players to its lowest point since the limited test first launched.
Even the most rose-tinted glasses will find it hard to paint a picture where losing over 10 percent of your player base after you’ve just launched the hyped successor to an already very successful game is normal. Valve should have smashed this out of the water and yet 100,000+ players have found the product so unsatisfying that they’ve jumped ship just a couple weeks in.
We’re not oblivious that gamers can be allergic to anything new in their precious video games and can be a little over-demanding at times, but even if we consider for a second that this is what’s happening here, the numbers don’t lie. We’re not talking about a few hundred disgruntled CS:GO players crapping on CS2 the same way they were probably crapping on CS:GO when it came out. We’re talking about 10s of thousands of players abandoning your new shiny game in the span of three weeks.
The signs are definitely worrying, but we shouldn’t forget there are still over 800,000 people who play CS2 at any given moment. The game is far from dead on arrival, and while Valve probably botched the launch, there’s still time to patch the game up and bring at least some of the deserters back to base. Unfortunately, the CS2 release itself looks like it would end up in history as a missed opportunity to grow the Counter-Strike family.
