Stalwart shooter will not be denied
Not content with having beaten its own concurrent player record just last month, Valve’s tactical shooter Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (CS:GO) smashed its own numbers out of the sky this past weekend, with a staggering 1.4 million players simultaneously logged in on Steam on Saturday, March 11.
As noted by Eurogamer, this incredible feat was achieved, in part, by a Twitter campaign that saw the community come together to spotlight the live ‘n’ kicking nature of the legendary release, which is celebrating over a decade on the Steam platform. A peak player count of 1,470,183 was recorded on Saturday, beating out the previous record of 1,308,963, recorded back in February. The official CS:GO team took to Twitter to thank the community for showing out.
Thank you to our 1.4M Twitter followers for organizing and playing CS:GO concurrently today.
— CS:GO (@CSGO) March 11, 2023
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Another reason that CS:GO is seeing a record resurgence in its (already healthy) community is likely due to the recent rumors that the near 20-year-old shooter is potentially about to receive a major upgrade, with whispers on the web suggesting that a Source 2 edition is currently preparing to launch — And might even be with us as soon as the next few months, even weeks. The update, if it indeed exists, is expected to bolster CS:GO‘s connectivity, textures, visual support, and servers. It should be noted that developer Valve is yet to confirm that a CS:GO Source 2 upgrade is incoming.
Still, with such amazing numbers clearly still on deck, CS:GO has proven without a doubt that it has a community, healthier and arguably more dedicated, than many newer and more expensive shooter franchises. Much like Valve’s own Team Fortress 2, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive is a title that appears set to just run, and run, and run. Here’s to the next decade of twitchy, trigger-happy action.
1.4m of us were simultaneously playing CS:GO this weekend [Eurogamer]
