CS:GO broke its peak player count record yet again with 1.8M players

(Image credit: Valve/Laura Shigihara)

In March, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive smashed its all-time peak player count record when 1,519,457 people logged on following the announcement of Counter-Strike 2. That record has now been broken again, with SteamDB recording 1,818,773 players—a jump of almost 300,000.

What's brought all these players to CS:GO? While cynics will suggest they're bots, it's likely that a significant amount are launching the game thanks to the final CS:GO Major and its tie-in rewards. Since the Paris Major begins on May 8, Valve has added its usual Pick'Em challenge, in which CS:GO players can attempt to predict the results. The closer your guesses are, the better the rarity of prizes.

There's also the newly arrived cosmetics: a sticker with the logo of every team and one with the signature of every player competing in the Major that can be added to any weapon you own. Given how many there are, anyone who is after a specific player is likely to head to the Steam Community Market to find them and prices can be decent. Here's one that's selling for just over $40.

The Paris Major will be the last one played in CS:GO, and the first Major played in Counter-Strike 2 won't take place until March, 2024. That means this will be the only Major for 2023, where normally there are two every year. It runs from May 8 until May 21.

Counter-Strike 2 is currently having a limited test for a select group of players, and Valve is calling the sequel "an overhaul to every system, every piece of content, and every part of the C-S experience." Oh, and it contains a Half-Life reference.

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Jody's first computer was a Commodore 64, so he remembers having to use a code wheel to play Pool of Radiance. A former music journalist who interviewed everyone from Giorgio Moroder to Trent Reznor, Jody also co-hosted Australia's first radio show about videogames, Zed Games. He's written for Rock Paper Shotgun, The Big Issue, GamesRadar, Zam, Glixel, Five Out of Ten Magazine, and Playboy.com, whose cheques with the bunny logo made for fun conversations at the bank. Jody's first article for PC Gamer was about the audio of Alien Isolation, published in 2015, and since then he's written about why Silent Hill belongs on PC, why Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale is the best fantasy shopkeeper tycoon game, and how weird Lost Ark can get. Jody edited PC Gamer Indie from 2017 to 2018, and he eventually lived up to his promise to play every Warhammer videogame.